


Love Like You

by Ohiknowlotsofthings10



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Bodyswap, Happy ending though, LOTS OF ANGST IM SORRY, M/M, Slow Burn, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, partially follows canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2018-10-01 23:50:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 39,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10203629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ohiknowlotsofthings10/pseuds/Ohiknowlotsofthings10
Summary: Yuuri’s lungs start closing and he can feel water begin to rush out of his eyes. 'What’s wrong with me?' He looks over to his left then to his right and sees a mirror placed next to a large black refrigerator. Yuuri scrambles to rise up to his feet, but feels like he’s walking on his skates for the first time.When he staggers in front of the glass he immediately sees what’s wrong. The mirror is tall enough to show his entire body, but the problem is that it’s not him.Just a simple soulmate body-swap au I had to get out of my system.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm hoping to put out new chapters often, but if there's anything that need improving or any comments you want to make than all are appreciated. this is non-betad so please bear with me for grammar or spelling mistakes

“Is the _butajiru_ tasty, Yuuri?”

Wide eyes glance over the edge of the soup bowl to see his mother’s star-lit smile aimed toward him. Katsuki Yuuri gently sets his bowl down and wipes the steam residue off of his nose and glasses with the edge of his sleeve.

“It’s delicious, Okaasan. Thank you very much,” Yuuri says respectfully, politeness is a given in his home. His sister, Mari, follows his lead and thanks her as well.

Hiroko sighs lovingly at her children and nudges her husband with her elbow. “Toshiya, don’t you think we should get Yuuri contacts instead of glasses? He’s wiping steam off of them more often than wearing them, so he can’t see half of the time,” Hiroko asks, concern in her tone.

Toshiya, Yuuri and Mari’s father, slurps a gulp of his soup then rests the empty bowl by his rice. Tonight, his mother prepared butajiru, one of Yuuri’s favorite soups that’s made with pork and different cooked roots, and stewed vegetables with rice. His mom almost always cooks soup for their dinners, but every so often, like on birthdays or other celebrations, she’ll make katsudon for the family and especially for Yuuri knowing that he prefers it over anything else.

“Yuuri is too young to have contacts, Hiroko,” his father decides quickly. “A seven-year-old child shouldn’t have the responsibility of using contacts, plus Yuuri looks cute with his glasses.” Toshiya grins warmly at his son and winks, making Yuuri blush from the praise.

“I like my glasses, even if they get foggy sometimes,” Yuuri mutters into his lap, focusing on his hands. He honestly doesn’t care that he can’t see in the fog or steam when he wears his blue-rimmed glasses, he loves the dark color on the edges and thinks that it makes him look older, considering that both of his parents wear glasses and not contacts.

“Alright,” Hiroko sighs and sets her chopsticks on the table. “But if you break your glasses while skating then we’re switching over to contacts, I want you to be able to see at all times.” Yuuri smiles and nods his head at his mother. “I won’t break my glasses, Okaasan. Sensei says I’m a very careful skater,” Yuuri starts eating his vegetables with rice and blows on the heat, although his lenses still get covered in steam. Hiroko sees this and leans over to wipe the glass herself with her own sleeve, then takes the glasses off and sets them on the table. “Might as well,” she sighs exasperatedly. Mari giggles at their mother over a mouthful of rice.

Yuuri is seven years old and has been skating at a family friend’s local ice rink since he was about six, when his close friend Yuko began to take lessons there. Ice Castle Hasetsu was only a short walk away from his family’s hot springs that also serves as his home where his parents, Hiroko and Toshiya, run the business while his sister, Mari, helps with the customers after school. Yuuri is too young to do much around the building except to help his mom wash the towels and to fluff them fresh for any new customers. Ice skating is his favorite thing to do when he doesn’t have school work, and when he isn’t skating, then watching Yuko practice her spins is another alternative. Yuuri hopes to be as good as her one day, so he can impress his family with a routine that has twists and twirls, but he is far from being that talented in his own opinion.   

Yuuri smiles at his mother and raises his chopsticks to his mouth, glad that his gasses are put away. He can’t see very well without them, but eating doesn’t really need you to use your eyes too much. He shoves the mixed rice into his mouth hungrily and feels a warm feeling vibrate through his chest, but instead of stewed zucchini reaching his tongue, a thick cold liquid runs down his throat unexpectedly and nearly chokes him from surprise. Yuuri coughs into his elbow and feels tears brimming at the corners of his eyes from the force of it.

From all of his years living, he has known that rice and veggies definitely should _not_ become a liquid when you start to eat them, so this comes as quite a shock to him. After a moment of hacking Yuuri feels his throat starting to clear up and he opens his eyes to see what’s wrong with his rice. His food has changed. The mixed vegetables he had tried to enjoy a moment earlier had vanished and now set before him is a new white bowl, entirely different from what his family had, that looked like it was filled with purplish soup. It tastes sour on his tongue, like pickled radish stewed in juice.

The bowl is wide and doesn’t resemble his family’s high-edge ones in the slightest. There’s small, golden swirls on the outside edges that look hand-painted, but precise. In the place where his chopsticks should be set is a large silver spoon and a water glass filled with a yellowish looking tea. This wasn’t his dinner table. Yuuri’s head shoots up in confusion to ask his parents what was wrong with his eyes, but only two concerned looking adults gaze back at him that definitely are not his mother and father. What surprises Yuuri even more was that he knows he isn’t wearing any glasses and that he can see these people perfectly fine.

By simply looking around Yuuri can already tell he’s in a kitchen. The table he’s sat at has only three chairs, with him facing a set of glass doors and the two people on either side of him. To the left of him, Yuuri sees the actual kitchen with a small stovetop above a white dishwasher. Actually, almost the entire kitchen was white and wooden except for the black countertop. Various metal pots are lined up on the stove’s backdrop while other pans and cookware are put away in glass cabinets on the above walls.

There’s a weird-looking tetsubin on one of the stove’s burners which has waves of steam rising from the spout in swirling tendrils. Through the glass doors before him, Yuri can faintly make out an outline of a couple couches with lamp desks placed beside them, seeing that it’s a living room. The entire room is lit with sunlight, which is very strange because Yuuri could’ve sworn that it was nearly seven o’clock when he sat down to eat and it’s never _this_ bright at seven. There’s windows behind him, Yuuri can tell from the light echoing along the muted gold paint on the walls surrounding the glass doors. It’s an unusual, but not unpleasant, change from the distinct backs and whites of the kitchen.

Going back to what’s in front of him, he can see that the adults in the two chairs are much different from the one’s he sees daily in Hasetsu. One of them, a woman, has deeply colored brunette hair that falls in her face and sweeps back behind one of her ears like lace curtains. Her lips are painted cherry-red and look like flowers, while her eyes are the color of the ocean that Yuuri’s family would visit in the summer. Various shades of blues and greens mixed with grey that seems to seep in from below the other colors.

The man seated across from her is opposite in his own appearance, though. His hair is cut short and curls in little tufts around his crown with a matching beard to join. Unlike the woman, his color is a dark grey that lightens slightly near the end of each hair, but he doesn’t look old at all. His hair must just naturally be that way. His eye color is extreme like the woman’s as well, although on a different spectrum. His are a deep, deep navy blue that appears almost black when you first see them, but right in the middle, near the iris’, Yuuri can see miniscule flecks of yellow dotted in the dark shade. He can tell all of this due to the fact that they’re gaping at him like he’s a ghost.

These are _not_ his parents and Yuuri should _not_ be here.

He looks down at his self and his brow furrows on confusion. _Since when did he put on nail polish?_ Dark crimson paint shined up at him as Yuuri could only examine them in awe. He has only worn nail polish a couple times in his life due to Mari persuading him to be her guinea pig on trying new colors when she didn’t want to put it on herself. It never looked like this, though. The color is clean and applied smoothly on short, almost perfect looking fingernails. _These aren’t his_. He looks past the hands to the black clothing that was once his favorite grey sweatpants and widens his eyes. _These aren’t his either_.

Yuuri’s heart jumps to his throat as he pushes himself away from the table haphazardly and catches his foot on the chair leg, sending him flying backwards in a cloud of flailing arms. He hears gasps from the two people seated in front of him. He lands with a thump on his side, where he can already feel a bruise begin to form from impact, and switches to move on his hands and knees, but stops mid-movement.

_What is that?_

 His eyes cross to focus on the tufts of silvery hair in front of his nose and he reaches his fingers up to cautiously examine it, but his hand isn’t the chubby, soft one he’s lived with for years. The fingers are longer and his skin is much paler than what it was before. His fat fingers are now covered in rough marks when he rubs them together against the grey hair. The red polish only makes the cloudy color seem even more out of place. Yuuri’s lungs start closing and he can feel water begin to rush out of his eyes. _What’s wrong with me?_ He looks over to his left then to his right and sees a mirror placed next to a large black refrigerator. Yuuri scrambles to rise up to his feet, but feels like he’s walking on his skates for the first time.

When he staggers in front of the glass he immediately sees what’s _wrong_. The mirror is tall enough to show his entire body, but the problem is that it’s not _him_. The brown eyes Yuuri had been born with are gone and in their place, are two silvery-blue patches of light that make Yuuri think of ice before eyes. The boy in front of him is taller than Yuuri has ever been, with smooth, grey hair that travels down from his head to his shoulders and falls in front of his face. His hair almost looks like incense smoke, but has somehow solidified into soft wisps that encase the boy’s face and arms protectively. The sky-blue, long-sleeved t-shirt and black jeans he has on feel a size too large around his skinny frame and hang on his shoulders like drapery. His skin is pale like cream, but looks darker in contrast to the cloudy hair framing his features. Yuuri’s never seen any boys like this at his school or the ice rink before, but he has seen people like this on the television when his parents watch the news. Maybe not to the same magnitude, though. This one looks…unique somehow.

He reaches forward so that his palms sweep over the glass to make sure that it’s actually there. Finding that it, in fact, _is_ there sends prickles of electricity running through his spine to the backs of his eyes. Yuuri slowly flexes his fingers out in front of him and the mirror shadows in return. When he touches his face the boy copies, when he starts crying again so do the blue eyes, and when he screams bloody murder the mirror replicates the action.

* * *

“Shhh, it’s okay, you just need to calm down and we’ll be able to help you. Can you do that for me?”

Yuuri is grasping his head in his hands while curled into a small ball on the floor in front of the mirror after screaming until his throat began to become raw. The woman in front of him is fairly calm while the man that sat at the table is pacing in the kitchen where Yuuri can feel his feet shake the tile with each step. After losing his voice Yuuri opted for simply hiding his face in his knees and hoping that the nightmare he’s in will end soon and he’ll crawl into bed with his parents and forget this all happened.

“Now, _Лапушка_ , will you bring your head up and look at me? I know this is scary and you don’t know me, but we need to communicate to work through this.”

Yuuri doesn’t understand a thing this woman is saying. To him it just sounds like a cluster of tongue and throat hisses and rolls. These people haven’t hurt him and the woman’s tone is soothing, but her voice only makes him more confused about what has happened to him. Yuuri’s mother always taught him that if he was ever lost in Hasetsu that he should stay where he was and try to find a person he knew that could help him. He could tell he was very far from Hasetsu, though. Yuuri hears another jumble of sound from the woman aimed toward the man and when he replies he sounds just as concerned as she does. Yuuri stifles his crying for a moment and raises his head, pushing the silver hair away from his eyes so he can see better.

“Do you know where I am?” he asks around the knot in his throat.

The father’s face lights up at Yuuri’s words and he smiles brightly before spitting unrecognizable phrases at the woman kneeling in front of Yuuri on the floor. The man stops pacing and leans in front of him eagerly, his face is covered in a thick, dark beard that barley shows his mouth when he speaks to him. He’s wearing a dark grey sweater with even darker pants that make his hair look bright in contrast. The woman is like the sun in comparison to the bearded man. Her skirt is long from what Yuuri can tell, sitting on the floor with her and all, and made of a multi-colored flower pattern with roses and violets. Her shirt is loosely fitted and creamy like her skin. She almost looks like one of the princesses from the movies his sister would watch with him occasionally.

“Hello, my name is Stephan. Can you tell me your name?” the bearded man asks in butchered Japanese with a thick accent that Yuuri has never heard before now. Yuuri’s heart lifts knowing that there is someone that can speak to him. He exhales, relieved, and leans forward a bit. “My name is Yuuri, do you know why I am here and where my haha and papa are? I was eating dinner, but now I am here and I don’t know where my family i-.” Yuuri hiccups and cries into the sleeve of his shirt to soak up the tears on his cheeks.

The man, Stephan, speaks slowly and cautiously when he answers, “Your family is probably at dinner still, waiting for you to come back. This will only last for a small amount of time and then you will be back with them. You are scared right now, but I promise you are safe with us.” Stephan smiles warmly when Yuuri peaks up from the comfort of his sleeve and Yuuri feels his heartbeat start to slow down again. The woman speaks again and thrusts her hand in Yuuri’s direction, but he still doesn’t have the slightest clue what she’s saying, it sounds cheerful though.

“My wife says that her name is Natalya and that she is very excited to meet you, finally,” Stephen explains in slacked Japanese while his wife stares at Yuuri eagerly. He wipes his eyes and reaches his hand towards her to shake. Natalya smiles brighter at this exchange and squeezes his hand reassuringly.

Yuuri doesn’t feel as frightened now that formal greetings have been established, although the confusion he felt earlier still swarms in his stomach like wasps in a hive. Yuuri looks at the foreign hands set in his lap and examine the filed-down finger nails like they’re the most interesting thing in the world. “May I ask,” he starts carefully, “why am I here right now with you, and who is _this_?” Yuuri gestures to his chest and hopes that Stephen understands Japanese well enough to answer him. Apparently, he does because Stephen simply grabs his wife’s hand in his and regards Yuuri as if he’s talking to a small bird before he speaks again.

“In Japan, did your school or parents teach you about soulmates yet?” Yuuri nods his head up and down slightly which makes Stephen sigh around his smile. “Perfect, then I won’t have to explain too much. Yuuri, right now you are in the body of my son and he is in your body being taken care of by your family back where you live. I can conclude this is the first time this has ever happened to you, yes?” Yuuri nods again.

In japan it’s called by lots of different names, switching, swapping, crisscrossing, the list goes on based on where you live. Soulmates are not usually discussed when you are young because it is more of a private topic that you only ever mention with your family or if they teach about it in school. Your mama and papa explained everything when you were about five so that if you were early with switching, then you wouldn’t be surprised. Their talks obviously didn’t affect you in the slightest.

“Alright,” Stephen stands up off of the floor and his wife joins him. “Let’s talk at the table about this. May I help you up?” Yuuri takes the hand placed before him to pick himself off the cold tile, but feels the skates beneath his feet again and falls back down, oddly landing on his knees instead of his back. Yuuri feels the soft fabric of a sitting pillow around his fingers and opens his eyes to no longer see the tiled floor of the foreign house, but his own dinner pillow at his family’s table. His head shoots up to see the bright faces of his parents and sister staring at him curiously.  Yuuri feels tears on his cheeks when he rushes into his mother’s arms and buries his face into the crook of her neck, she smells like vanilla and laundry detergent.

“Oh, Yuuri, this is you, right?” His mother asks, feeling along his back and running her fingers through his hair. He shakes his head and cries into her shoulder, clutching to her clothes like if he lets her go then he would be back with the two adults that spoke differently than him. They weren’t bad at all, they were just…confusing. It’s frightening not knowing where your family is or when you’ll see them again, especially for a seven year old.

“It’s okay, sweetheart, you’re safe. It was scary, wasn’t it?” Yuuri hiccups and another flood of tears pours onto Hiroko’s shirt. She hums into his hair and continue rubbing his back soothingly. “My first swap was very scary, too, but it’s over now, so don’t be frightened anymore.”

He sobs into his mother for what feels like an hour before finally quieting down and simply allowing himself to be held in her soft, chubby arms, being cradled like an infant. Toshiya and Mari sit quietly, knowing exactly what Yuuri is going through and also knowing that there is nothing they can do to help him until he can calm himself down.

“Alright, Yuuri,” Hiroko rocks Yuuri forward in her lap and wipes any stray tears away from his cheeks and under his eyes, making his skin feel sticky from the water. “Can you tell us who or what you saw? We want to be able to figure out where you went. Was it somewhere her in Japan?” his mother questions.  

“No, the people weren’t Japanese. They didn’t look like you or papa and they spoke like this,” Yuuri presses his tongue against the inside of his teeth and blows air out from the sides of his mouth, making a wet, hissing sound. Toshiya laughs on the other side of the table and Mari chuckles into the air while Yuuri peers at them from his mother’s arms. “It’s true! It was like they were eating while they were talking, but Stephan spoke Japanese for me,” he clarifies. Hiroko leans in forward curiously. “Who is Stephan?”

“He is the man I saw in the house I was in. There was also a woman, but I forgot her name.” He focuses on his lap, trying fruitlessly to think of the name that Stephan called his wife. _It began with a N right?_

“What did he say to you when he spoke Japanese?”

Yuuri looks up at his mother and furrows his eyebrows. “He asked for my name and told me that his son was here with you.” He gazes over the table at his papa and sister then back at his mom who grins ecstatically at him. “That’s right, Yuuri!” she exclaims. “There was a little boy who switched bodies with you just like how you switched with him. Remember when we talked about this with you when you were younger? He was very scared and confused like you were with _his_ parents.” Hiroko sighs and tilts her head slightly, still smiling at her son. “We tried to talk to him, but he spoke the language that you heard earlier with the man and woman, so we couldn’t catch his name. Maybe next time you swap we’ll find out what he’s called.” Yuuri’s shoulders sag and he feels more water brimming at the corners of his eyes.

“This will happen again?

 Hiroko clutches him to her chest, rubbing his back to calm him down before the sobbing comes again. “Yes, this will happen a few more times while you grow up, but it’s the same thing that happened to me and your papa and Mari goes through it too.” Hiroko gestures to her husband and daughter, who grin back at Yuuri reassuringly.

“One day you’re going to meet this little boy whose parents you saw today and he’s going to make you the happiest you can ever be, so this’ll all be worth it. I promise,” his father winks at him lovingly.  

The tears in his eyes stop coming and Yuuri suddenly feels extremely sleepy, crying always makes him too tired too quickly. “Okaasan, I want to go to bed,” he mumbles in his mother’s shirt. Hiroko shifts her arm under his chubby legs and lifts him up, so that his arms are wrapped around her shoulders securely. She stands up from her seat on the floor by the table and starts walking toward the onsen’s back rooms where the bedrooms are.

 “Let’s go, little piggy. You’ve had a rough day.”

 Yuuri is set in his bed and snuggles up against his small animal plushies lined up against the wall, feeling the soft fabric rub against his face and warm him up. Hiroko kisses the crown of his head and heads to the door. “Good night, Yuuri. I’ll see you in the morning,” she softly wishes for him.

“Night,” he mutters through the fur on his stuffed panda bear.

Hiroko shuts the door and Yuuri hears her footsteps trickle down the hallway. Sleep comes quickly for him and behind his eye lids, all he sees through the night is the silvery thread and ice of the foreign boy that he’ll remember for years ahead of him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here's the apartment pic I used as reference for Viktor's apartment: http://petersburgcity.com/images/place/417.jpg
> 
> feel free to message any comments or suggestions, i'm very open to critisism, thanks for reading!


	2. Chapter 2

Just like his parents and grandparents before them, Viktor Nikiforov has his first body switching at ten years old, a ripe young age for seeing your soulmate for the first time. Ever since Viktor’s birthday on December 25th, nearly eleven months ago, he had been praying each night that the next day he would finally have his first swap. His family wasn’t very religious, but if there was someone up there to pray to then he was definitely going to try! What’s that harm in it anyways? Knowing that a ten-year trend occurred in his ancestry, Viktor became very concerned when November rolled into St. Petersburg, Russia and his eleventh birthday creeped closer and closer with no soulmate for nearly a year.

That’s why he enveloped himself into skating almost vigorously this year. The windy breeze he would feel on his skin when he would glide on the ice gave him comfort when he would overthink, and the difficult, twisted jumps that would send him in the air kept his mind off the fact that he still had no idea who he was destined to be with. Skating was like a private haven for him to escape to when he would feel melancholy or anxious, or simply wanted to feel the ice under his feet. To him it was blissful solitude.

Unlike other boys at his school and skating classes, Viktor absolutely _adored_ hearing about soulmates. It was more common for girls to be interested in the idea of having a life-long, predestined partner, while most often the boys would try to forget the fact completely and only focus on their friends and family. But, Viktor didn’t care what was normal or not for children his age. Having the knowledge that there was someone, somewhere in the world you would fall in love with and share your life with made him feel giddy with anticipation each time he’d think of it. Although, soulmates were a fairly intimate topic to talk about, Viktor took every chance that he could to ask his parents or his friends parents about how they both met, what it was like to switch, what age it happened at, and what it was like to meet the other person.

So, when he saw, one day, that his warm beet soup had suddenly become steamed vegetables and rice, Viktor nearly had a heart attack from a mix of excitement and shock. Just a moment before he was having lunch with his mama and papa at the dining table in their city apartment. His mother made sour cream-topped borsht and homemade bread like usual for that time of year, and they were all discussing the local news as well as Viktor’s wish for a new pair of skates for his birthday. The fantastic thing about having your birthday near a major holiday was that there were lots of sales at the nearby winter sports store, perfect for new gear each year.

While breaking his slice of bread down the middle, Viktor feels a slight tingling in his chest, like when his foot would fall asleep after sitting for a long time. It only lasted a moment, but the outcome of it was himself sitting on the floor with an entirely new set of people. _This isn’t normal_ , he states to himself, as he tries to focus his eyes on the blotched figures in front of him. Viktor has tried on his papa’s reading glasses before for entertainment and to see what it was like to have blurry vision. It’s definitely not very amusing when you’re unable to get your perfect seeing back by just taking off the glasses.

 He tries to look at the new food in his bowl more carefully to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating, but his eyes are blurred slightly and he can only make out the basic forms to know what’s in front of him. He can smell perfectly fine, though, which is fantastic because the food’s aroma is nothing like what his mother has ever made. It smells…thicker? Does that even make sense for a scent and not a feeling?  The flavors seem to stack upon each other in the air, creating depth. It’s definitely not borsht, that’s for sure. He brings his hands up to his face and squishes the new set of fat cheeks he remembered having when he was younger. _They’re smaller than me._

“Are you alright sweetheart?” A female voice comes across the table, which is very odd because the table comes up to Viktor’s chest while he’s on his knees instead of sitting in a chair. His mama always chastised him for eating anywhere but the dining room table, so this is very abnormal to see this family sitting on pillows while having a meal. _What a fun lunch, sitting on the floor!_

He doesn’t pay much attention to what the woman said, but knows that is was most likely directed at him. Viktor remembers that he only has a short amount of time before the swap ends and he’ll be back with his family soon, so he might as well take the opportunity to learn all that he can about his future partner. The silence cracks when he clears his throat and sits himself strait so as to look presentable. He wants his future family to think that he’s polite and mature like how his parents raised him to be.

“Err, hello! My name is Viktor Nikiforov and I am from St. Petersburg!” His voice is different now. It’s softer and a much higher pitch than what he usually speaks with, but it sounds…comforting to hear. It’s like when you hear a familiar song for the first time in years and you take in all the memories you have from it in that moment. In this instance, though, he has no memories of his soulmates voice, but recognizes that their sound will _become_ future memories. Almost like a reverse déjà-vu.

 He clears his throat and starts again, “This is my first swap and I’m very excited to meet you all, finally. It’s weird that you eat on the floor for lunch and, also, my eyesight is very blurry. Are there any glasses that I can use?”

He sees the brushed images of people look at each other then back at him, but instead of receiving the answer to his question a bombardment of sharp sounds are thrown at him. _That is definitely not Russian._ Viktor feels his posture sag as he realizes that these people won’t be able to understand him at all. This means that his soulmate lives in another country and speaks an entirely different language from him. There goes so much for learning anything about them today. 

Viktor tries to think of the most important thing that he could do while he has almost no way of communication and a very limited time span to do it in. The voices, now a deeper masculine tone and a higher feminine one, are going back and forth between each other, probably trying to figure out what they should try to do to speak with him. It’s very unsettling not to be able to understand what’s happening in front of him and Viktor starts getting nervous. _This was not how this was supposed to go._

The strange, clacking language mixed with the absence of any way to perfectly see what was going on around him began to build a stone in his stomach, making Viktor feel sick. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re all saying. I’m from Russia,” he lays emphasis on the word “ _Russia_ ” thickly. “Do any of you speak Russian?”

Again, nothing but blank silence and unsettling stares fill the room with a heaviness that presses down on Viktor’s shoulders, making his eyes feel like lead as tears threaten to slip out of the corners. Viktor has waited _years_ to be able to finally have a chance to see what his soulmate is like and what his future life could possibly end up being and here he is, not even knowing what country he’s in and as blind as a bat with hearing problems.

He often pictured this day to happen within his own country where he would actually be able to have a proper conversation with the people he meets, while gaining valuable information. Right now, he’s just confused. Below his ribs, Viktor can recognize the fear and anxiousness that he’d grown familiar with before performing in skating competitions; no matter how many times he has it though, the emotions will always be fresh and pungent. The voices sound more worried once he begins to openly cry, but this only makes him feel worse

Viktor rubs at his eyes with petit, chubby hands, making them sting and water even more. The rushed thumping of his over-excited heart jumps a beat and breaks the rhythm as he remembers why he’s here in the first place. His hands move upward from his face to his hair and feel short, dense tufts between his fingers. He has had long hair for a majority of his childhood, so the finiteness of the small strands is foreign to him. From there he travels to both sides of his head and feels a pair of ears that stick out a bit more that what he’s accustomed to. The weight on his shoulders has completely diminished once his fingertips touch the flesh of his lips and rest there. _This is my soulmate_. Viktor feels the lips beneath his touch turn upwards in a giddy smile and the tears return to his cheeks almost immediately.

_They are actually here._

For a moment, he simply sits in complete stillness, admiring the curve of his soulmate’s plump cheeks and the softness of his hands. Viktor’s hands have grown calloused from years playing in the forest with his papa and rubbing against his skating gloves when he would slip on the ice. These new hands are like cotton along his eyelashes when he follows the curve of his eyes in a small arch. He can tell that they are younger than he is by at least a few years due to the size they are and the baby fat on them, but if anything, it makes them more endearing. Viktor has always been very fond of smaller children and found them to be much happier than a majority of the children his age. Plus, their smiles are always colorful and _always_ sincere.

He places the palms of his hands over his eyes and listens to the family in front of him converse in their unusual language, but remains silent. He’ll have to figure out what they speak once he gets back home, so that he can learn to talk whenever they meet again. His heartbeat rushes in his veins and taps on the undersurface of his fingers and ears, creating a gentle beat like a lullaby. His soulmate is here and alive and well and _beautiful_. Viktor has not even seen them with his own eyes yet, but from the youth in their voice to the damaged sight he can already feel the charm in their soul that captures him immediately.

The buzz in his chest begins again and the warmth of his hands has faded away completely from them making contact with cold tile. Viktor immediately opens his eyes and sees the worried face of his papa standing over him while he sits with a sore butt on the floor of their apartment.

“Vitya, are you back with us?”

Viktor smiles widely as he throws himself from the ground into his father’s waiting arms and is instantly swung in a tight circle like when he was younger. “Papa, it was amazing! It was so different there and my soulmate had such terrible eyesight that I couldn’t see a single thing when looking at their family. And they all spoke so strangely and it was fast, like they were trying to talk as quickly as possible,” he rapidly explains. Viktor is set back down on his feet as his mother steps forward to wrap her arms around him in matronly protection. His father is listening eagerly to his words, though, and hangs on every one of them.

“They sit on the floor when they eat, papa. They don’t have chairs, but pillows that are set around the table which is only half a meter tall! Isn’t that weird?” Viktor’s smile stretches from ear-to-ear as he retells everything he can think of to his parents. They’ve been almost as anxious as he was to finally get his switch and he knows they’ll want a covered story. His papa sits at the dinner table and his mama guides him over to his usual seat so they can talk more comfortably. “Tell us about them, Vitya! But leave no detail left untold,” his mama asks eagerly of him. Viktor leans forward and rests his hands on the table, knowing that he’ll use them to explain in his story-telling.

“Well, when I first got there I saw that my borsht was gone and everything in front of me was very blurry, like when I wear papa’s glasses.” He gestures to his father who grins in recognition. “Then I saw people in front of me and I tried to introduce myself, but when they tried to talk they didn’t speak Russian. It sounded very strange and it made me really sad that I couldn’t ask them any questions or even what their names were; I couldn’t see, either, and that just made me more confused and then I was scared because it was all so…different.” His voice hikes up in excitement as he continues. “But, then I thought of how I _was_ my soulmate at that moment and it made me feel so much better! They are much younger than me because their voice is higher and their hands are soft and fat.” Viktor holds up his hands for emphasis and flips them from front to back to show his own slenderness.

“I wasn’t able to see them, but I felt their face in my hands and could figure their features,” he runs his hands along his own face trying to replicate the warmth beneath his own fingertips. “Their hair is short and fluffy like feathers and their hands feel like cotton. They were so small that I could feel their heartbeat everywhere and it sounded like your singing, mama!” His attention is focused on Natalya as he remembers the songs she would sing for him to go to sleep when he was smaller, those memories are some of his favorites.

His papa chuckles heartily and pats him on the back affectionately. “Well, it sounds like things went better for you than it did for him, Viktor.” Viktor’s eyes widen in realization and stands up from the table in excitement. “Wait! You were able to meet them! What were they like? What did they speak like? Were they shy or open or were they scared like I w-“ He stops in mid-thought to allow another question to arise in his mind.

“Did you say “ _him_ ”? They’re a boy?!”

Stephan makes a playful side glance at his wife, then returns to his son’s attention. “Yes, he introduced himself with a boy name, so I can only assume that he is one. Of course, you’ll have to ask him yourself to be sure.” Viktor swallows a lump and sits back down in the slightly wobbly chair that matches his table set. The stone is back in his stomach and it keeps him rooted in his spot.

“What is his name?”

Viktor is more nervous now than he has ever been in any previous skating competitions combined, but his father just smiles in understanding at the stillness in his breath. “He is called Yuuri and he is from Japan. Remember me teaching you about that country when I travelled there last winter?” Viktor nods his head. “Well, he lives there from what I can tell and he speaks Japanese, which is what you heard those people talk in.” Viktor’s father is a skating judge and had to travel last year to Japan. Viktor couldn’t go with him because of school and his lessons, but his papa did have to learn some basic Japanese to live there. He never spoke it around the house, so Viktor had only heard it a handful of times in his life.

_Yuuri_. He repeats the word over and over in his head while listening to his parent’s account of what happened while he was gone. He elongates the ‘u’ sound like his father did, it rolls off his tongue like syrup and tastes just as sweet. He smiles around it and plays with the letters in his mind, analyzing each one like the name might slip away.

When they finish their account of the meeting with his soulmate Viktor understands a few things. Yuuri is young and fragile. He’s obviously smaller than Viktor is and was scared very easily by the swapping, which means he was not expecting it to come like how Viktor did. Secondly, he knows absolutely no Russian whatsoever and lives in a country whose culture is very different from his own, meaning that Viktor will have to try very hard to find out where he lives and what he’s like over their next few switches. Lastly, Viktor has become unconditionally enthralled with this boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, comments and criticism are always appreciated! I want yall to enjoy reading this so leave suggestions to what I can improve if you catch anything


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't speak Russian, so please bear with me an tell me if any mistakes are made!

“Nikiforov! What did I tell you about your camel? Keep your legs at a right angle or I’ll have you be doing nothing but stretches for the next five practices, you hear me?!”

Viktor ignores Yakov’s command and switches effortlessly into a Biellman spin from the camel spin he was just finishing, which was completely fine in his opinion. Yakov just had to yell at him about something every few minutes or else he’d end up with a hernia. Viktor was seventeen years old now and had been practicing camels since he was eleven, allowing him to know that that move is the last thing he should be worrying about concerning his never-ending improvement.

The scraping of the ice is like an orchestra symphony to his ears as he transitions to a simple upright spin and then softly feathers off into a backwards glide. The air catches his hair and helps it to float freely in front of his face. Yakov constantly pesters him about tying it back like the rest of his long-haired students so he can see better, but Viktor likes the feeling of it ghosting across his cheeks and moving as swiftly as him. Plus, he doesn’t need to see in order to skate in performances. His own instincts lead him to where he needs to place his feet and he can sense his position in the rink solely from where he can hear the cheering crowds on all sides of him. Figure skating to Viktor is an entire universe of emotions within itself that can only be properly expressed through the blood, sweat, and tears that he carries in himself every day. It’s an enigmatic language where every single person has their own dialect to speak in that only they fully understand.

Viktor nonchalantly skates over to the edge of the rink and steps off the ice for a much-needed water break. His black and red duffle bag blends into various ones owned by Yakov’s other students, but it’s easy for Viktor to discern his own because of the beautifully stitched cursive of his name on one of the sides in crimson thread.

When he was younger he was worried that he would misplace his bag, or have it be mistaken by another skater and taken with them by accident, so his mama stitched his name on the fabric to stop his worrying. He honestly hated Russian cursive with every fiber of his being due to the fact that every single letter, save only a select few, looked exactly the same to him and reading handwriting was even worse. Doctor’s prescriptions where pure hell. But, he could pick out his mother’s handwriting easily from reading it for so many years and the elegant curves she added to his name reminds him every single time how much effort she must have put into sewing it. Viktor loves his parents more than they’ll ever know, and he knows that they love him just as much.

He plops down next to his bag and unzips the main opening, seeing the water bottle on top of his jacket and extra glove pairs. Yakov has been driving him harder lately since he turned seventeen several months ago, and Viktor can rarely ever find time to take a break unless his coach is too busy yapping at the other skaters to notice that he was off the ice. He loves Yakov like he was family, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t get irritated by the constant, barreling instructions thrown at him during practice.

That Yakov, though, is nothing compared to the red-faced, furious man he can be when Viktor turns his triples into quads during performances when his coach tells his strictly not to. Even though he lands them every time and earns himself a golden first spot on the podium, Yakov just wants him to listen. That isn’t Viktor, though. He wants to push himself beyond what people expect of him for the sake of seeing their surprise when he breaks records and completes programs that are meant exclusively for advanced skaters. Taking the breath from the crowd is the fuel for his internal fire that pushes him to do more and more, each and every time.

Viktor unscrews the water bottle lid and raises the cool metal to his lips. He can barely get a gulp down his throat before he hears Yakov start going off like a fire alarm.

“Viktor! Get off your ass you _kozyol_! I better see those blades on the ice in no less than one minute!”

Viktor slurps down a few more gulps of water, then screws the bottle’s cap on and sets it on the bench next to the duffle bag. He smiles brightly at the stern face of his coach from across the rink and waves at him like a six-year-old greeting their best friend.

“I was only taking a break, Yakov. I’ll be back on in a second,” he chirps in a sing-song voice, winking at the nervous student that was previously being yelled at. They’re only around elementary school age, so they don’t realize that Yakov’s harsh words are his way of showing love, even if it makes everyone feel on edge most of the time.

Viktor remembers when he first met Yakov at five years old. He had been skating before then with his parents at the local rink, but as a birthday gift they decided to sign him up for lessons under Yakov, who knew his father from years of skating together under the same coach and then Yakov entering competitions that his father would judge. Viktor was lucky to have such connections because Yakov doesn’t teach just anyone.

Yakov treated him like a military cadet for the first few years, demanding “yes sir, no sir” and acting sternly critical on his movements like his life would depend on it. Viktor thought of it like a game of war whenever he would skate, Yakov being the general and Viktor being the first soldier who would bring home victory for his country. It made him feel better when his coach would yell instructions across the ice after Viktor would mess up a simple glide or spin. Viktor never once thought that Yakov didn’t like him, like how most of his other students would think. He knew that he wanted what was best for all of them and he also knew that his father wouldn’t be friends with someone unless they were genuine and had other’s best interests in mind.

Viktor is one of Yakov’s best students, if not the best one. He tries his best during every skating practice which makes his coach’s life much easier because Viktor is inspired to glide smoother, jump higher, and spin faster. His performance in class raised the bar even higher when he was ten, after his first switch with his soulmate. The pure intimacy he felt in that small window of time, actually being with his predestined partner, was enough to drive him to exceed his coach’s and parent’s expectations through skating, school, home, anything he put his heart into. He definitely wouldn’t be where he is now without Yuuri as his incentive.

 Nothing but inspiration and tenderness was with him when he would imagine their next meeting that Viktor would definitely _not_ screw up like last time. He had asked his papa to teach him some Japanese, so that he could talk to his future family the next time he would meet with them. Trying to pack in learning an entirely new language and three different writing systems into his education and skating practice was a challenge to say the least, but he has the basics down for formal and informal introductions and he can write in hiragana and katakana if he thinks herd about it. Kanji is a whole other story, though. Viktor only recognizes a select few words and can write even less of the characters. Athletics is more of his forte, not language and composition.

He practices his name more often than anything else. Not his own name but Yuuri’s.  His teachers don’t pay any attention to the three simple katakana characters that are scribbled around the margins of his schoolwork and the inside of his trapper-keeper. He’ll even put little hearts around the name, like a lovesick schoolgirl. But, he supposes that’s exactly what he is, minus the girl part. This attachment was much different from what he felt for his mama and papa, for Yakov, for his small number of friends that he never sees because of his packed schedule, even for his adorable poodle, Makkachin, that he loves like a child.

For Yuuri, a boy he had never even spoken to or seen before, Viktor felt like he had known him for longer than what seems imaginable to a seventeen-year-old. He could feel an absence in his chest, just below his sternum and to the right of where his heart beats. The warmth of it is bittersweet. The connection he has with his soulmate feels like a pulled thread that he can easily grab onto, but he doesn’t know how. Both of them are as close as any two souls can be, but physically, they’re divided by miles upon miles of land and people. Although, he can speak French fairly well with lessons from his mother who grew up in _Savoie_ , close to Switzerland, and then moved to Russian and met his father. 

Viktor knows that it’ll all be worth it in the end, that all of his pining and daydreams and nightmares and work he has put in to make himself into a person that could deserve his love will soon pay off. He just hopes that he’ll be good enough for Yuuri, that he’ll be able to take care of him when the time comes.

He sets the thought aside with a soft smile and readjusts his laces. Bringing his skate up, he brushes off the snow piled on the edges of his blades, feeling it between his fingers before it melts. Viktor sighs and pushes himself away from the bench, heading to the rink’s entrance. Yakov is waiting at the left side of the ice showing the same elementary student the correct arm placements you’re supposed to have when moving into an upright spin.

 “Viktor!” he yells and makes the kid jump from surprise, but they quickly go back to their arm position. “Choreography practice until I’m done, _ponimayu_?”

“ _Ya ponyal_ , Yakov! On it.”

He steps onto the ice and slips away toward the center of the rink where he usually begins his routines. Viktor’s blades curve against the ice like how a paint brush might stroke against a canvas dressed in acrylics. He’s swift and precise as he glides into his beginning position and flutters his eyes closed. Piano notes flit about behind his closed eyelids and the music slowly, but surely, crescendos from a pianissimo to a mezzo-forte as the introduction comes to a close in his mind, leading into the main performance.

Viktor’s legs move without even needing him to think and his body naturally transitions into skating mode, where his thoughts are entirely separate from how he moves except to show his emotions with the music. Each echoing chord in his mind is another step to his sequence as his skates drift to their own accord and carry him along the ice like a breeze, and every decrescendo is his free leg trailing behind him like a kite tail in May winds.

The song he’s performing is filled with hope and fervor, dipped in solicitude for whatever the listener can bring to mind first, and he takes that into careful consideration when arching his back into a lunge across the ice, hoping to communicate through his body what the piano cannot with its sound. The staccato in his head pounds right alongside the blood in his veins as Viktor catches his foot in a layback spin and feels his hair like a whirlwind encompassing his twirling form.

What Viktor couldn’t tell his audience in words he used skating. His spins showed the fluttering of his heart and the heat in his chest, the Ina Bauer curving into the ice was his own personal longing for something he couldn’t have, not yet. The music’s crest is approaching quickly that will guide his movements into a spin combination, the first being a triple toe loop. Viktor breathes in and rhythmically moves his feet in back cross-overs, preparing for the first jump. His left foot turns forward to approach the move, but there’s a break in his internal melody. A sudden rush of nerves bolts through his chest, a feeling he knows all too well, as Viktor lifts his leg and halts himself into the spin.

There is no expected sound of his skate catching the ice, though. The momentum he carried on his blades had disappeared altogether and left him feeling very out of place while he lay stretched out on his back, surrounded by a blanket comforter. Viktor examines the ceiling in the nearly pitch-black bedroom, save for the moonlight streaming in through the window to the left of him, and realizes what has happened within a fraction of a second.

Viktor bolts out of the sheets like a fired bullet and rushes over on the bed to the medium-sized window set directly left of him. The moonlight cast shadows over the open courtyard that he can barely see enough to distinct it because of the blurry eyesight he remembers from before. He can see well enough, albeit the colors and shapes come together like a water reflection.

 One of the first things he notices is that he is on the second floor of the house he visited years and years ago. The top branches of a well-grown tree loom close to the window and create shadows on the glass and the walls of the room. It’s Viktor’s best guess that it’s a flower tree of some kind due to the bight white radiating off of it from the moonlight.

If his soulmate actually lives in Japan like what he is expecting, then it might be wise to assume the tree’s a cherry blossom, especially considering it’s spring and they should all be in full bloom around this time. Viktor doesn’t know enough about Japanese plant environments to be completely sure, though. He sits back on his heels sinking down into the mattress and looks over his shoulder at the rest of the room. He can make out the shape of a desk up against the back wall.

Viktor rests his foot down on the cold wooden floor planks and feels goosebumps raise on his legs from the cool air. He brushes his fingers on the desk’s chair and allows it to guide his hand to the flat workspace, working its way across scrap papers and rolling pencils under his touch. Viktor squints his eyes in the dark and catches a glimmer of light by the right corner of the desk. He carefully moves his hand over the small, plastic frames and picks them up cautiously by one of the temples.

Although it’s been years, Viktor recognizes the soft, chubby hands of the little boy he met under very special circumstances. The fingers are longer now, with age and feel very large compared to the petit baby hands Viktor thought about for so long. He raises the glasses to rest on the bridge of his nose and the whole world comes into focus.

  _Being able to see properly is a blessing_ , Viktor thinks to himself as he regards the study desk.

Within the natural light coming in through the window, he sees small piles of papers and books stacked on the desk in a sort of organized chaos. Sadly, everything is written in Japanese except for the English 1 textbook opened to a few chapters in. Tiny, green sticky notes placed all around the margins of the pages and are decorated in loose Japanese characters, most of which Viktor can recognize but not give any meaning to. He can understand and speak English almost fluently because of school, so the chapter on past, present, and future tenses makes Viktor cringe from memories of late night English essays.

The bedroom smells cold, like pine needles and mint crushed together to make tea, but the scent rest soft in his chest and gives a comfortable weight there. Viktor inhales and feels his chest rise with ease, filling his lungs with what feels like a forest. He rests his fingertips on one of the English book sticky notes, dragging his finger along the Japanese script that his hands seem to remember writing and examines the characters as if his mind will decipher them as long as he pays careful attention.

Following the edge of the desk, Viktor’s eyes moves along crumbled papers and to the wall behind the book stacks and then up even more. His own name gapes back at him in perfectly scripted Russian on the bottom half of a poster he recognizes all too well. It was before one of his first Junior events when he was fourteen; he competed with other amazing Russian skaters his age, but still took first place gold at the end. After the competition, various news stations and photographers wanted nothing more than to get their information for the next day’s headline, so camera flashes and questions went off by the dozens.

He was very happy with the picture’s end result when it premiered in his favorite skating magazine for the next issue. It was him presenting his golden medal to the crowds and savoring the heat of their burning words of praise and admiration. Those moments are like sunlight on his skin even now. There are two other competitors standing beside him with satisfied looks on their faces, glad to be honored for their winnings by the audience and press. All of their names are written in a decorated font on the bottom of the poster along with various information on their skating careers and the way they performed in the competition, also adding some facts on their own personal interests. Viktor mentioned his poodle, Makkachin, which he had gotten a few years before as a birthday gift from his parents, and told the magazine reporters about their walking paths around St. Petersburg. He loved seeing his fans when he would jog the scenic pathways and allow them to give Makkachin belly rubs, he cares for all of them deeply.

The plastic of the poster looked clean and untouched, although it was released years ago, for a limited-edition Juniors Figure Skating fan set. Viktor touches his name in the styled Russian cursive, he still hates cursive, and examines the other posters on the wall and covering the majority of the room. In many of them he can see himself, considering he’s one of the world’s top skaters, it doesn’t surprise him in the slightest, standing alongside his skating mutuals who he doesn’t remember very well.

 A few faces stand out on each paper from forced conversations Viktor had in order to be a polite competitor, but no names come to mind. Viktor usually kept to himself during banquets and ceremonies and allowed his parents to do all the talking unless he was asked a question directly. The other skaters didn’t interest him or they had already formed their own groups that Viktor didn’t feel his place to intrude upon. He wasn’t very lonely, though, not at all in fact. His parents, Makkachin, and Yakov give him everything that people his own age can’t.

_So, Yuuri’s a fan of skating._

Viktor’s mouth folds itself into a toothy smile as he thinks of the irony of having a soulmate that has pictures of himself hung up in their room without them even knowing what it means. It’s extremely endearing. Viktor remembers himself and excitedly places a warm hand over his mouth to feel the curves of lips he hadn’t forgotten since his first switching, they feel dry against his fingers and he rubs them together out of habit.

“Wow,” he exhales breathily, enjoying the vibrating in his throat from a voice softer than his own. That one word felt like silken cream to hear as Viktor raises another hand to cup his cheek in his palm, running a thumb smoothly along the jawbone. He allows himself to simply stand there for a quiet moment, feeling his soulmate’s breath in the air and his lungs, newly calloused fingers on the apples of his cheeks, brushing them back and forth. Short hairs on the back of his neck like blossoming flower petals and even more velvety. _His heartbeat_.

That was what Viktor felt the most of. Every push and pull was an ocean wave climbing over all of him, then sinking back down below the skin to repeat and repeat…and repeat…repeat… It was all a wristwatch within the water that ticked and tocked and crashed into a serene hum like music, ethereal music that only he could hear. A wound music box within a person. Viktor remembers that he did this the last time. Listened and felt whatever he could because a switch is only temporary, then he wouldn’t see Yuuri until they swapped again and that could take even longer than the years before. He should make this count before he loses his chance.

Viktor opens his eyes and grabs one of the mechanical pencils laying carelessly on the desk, then slips a blank paper off of the pad near the textbook. He scribbles down a messily written _privyet_ before thinking on it, scratching it out, and replacing the greeting with a more practical _konnichiwa_ in clumsy hiragana. _So far so good_ , he thinks to himself. _But, what next?_

He writes _Yuuri_ after the introduction in precise katakana and then proceeds to English due to his Japanese being less than basic.

 _‘My name is Viktor Nikiforov and I’m your soulmate! I’m also one of the figure skaters on some of your posters if you didn’t recognize my name.’_ Viktor bites his lip, thinking, then starts again _. ‘I live in St. Petersburg, Russia and I would really like to meet you sometime soon if you would be alright with that. Sorry that I can’t write this in Japanese, but I’m not very good at it. I’m learning, though, because you spoke Japanese with my papa when we switched a few years ago! It’s very difficult so it might take me a while’_. Viktor jots down his phone number near the bottom of the page and puts a circle around it to make it look bigger. ‘ _If you ever want to contact me then feel free too, I’ve been really excited about meeting you after so long, but if you don’t want to then I completely understand.’_ His hand hesitates then continues writing _. ‘Please consider it, though.’_

Viktor draws a little heart near the number and reads his letter over, knowing that the swap will be ending very soon and he doesn’t have much time. He folds the letter in half and writes _Yuuri_ in his own Russian then Japanese katakana below it. The letter is set on top of the small stack of scrap papers near the edge of the desk where Viktor’s sure it’ll be noticed. He turns around to examine the bedroom one last time before he has to leave and feels his heart jump strait to his throat, then he relaxes and sighs.

“Hey there puppy. You look a lot like my poodle Makkachin.”

The small curly-haired poodle at the foot of the bed pants and sniffs the air in Viktor’s direction before yipping happily at being acknowledged. Viktor kneels next to the scruffy dog and scratches behind it’s ears like how he treats Makkachin, earning an excited tail wag in response.

“Oh, look at you, beautiful! You like ear scratches don’t you, you pretty boy? Or girl, it doesn’t matter because you’re so cute!”

Viktor coos at the dog and races his hands through the brown fur enthusiastically. Honestly, who needs friends when you have adorable puppies? The poodle kneads his head into Viktor’s palms happily and he speeds up the scratching. “If Yuuri has you, then he’ll love Makkachin. Isn’t that right sweetheart?” Viktor sits on the floor and allows the dog to climb into his lap. A moment later a fuzzy feeling of nerves enters his chest like earlier and Viktor leans his back against the bedframe, making sure he’s in a comfortable position. “Sayonara, puppy!” He blinks in the darkness and opens his eyes to the blinding lights of the skating rink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, this is un-betad so if you find any mistakes or have any suggestions on how to improve this, i'm all ears! also thank y'all for taking the time to even read this, i appreciate it so much you have no idea!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually enjoyed writing this chapter, but if there's anything wring with grammar or accuracy then send a comment! I love hearing from ya'll, it makes my day!

 

Sparkling shots of pain shoot up along Yuuri’s right leg and then trickle up to his shoulder as he feels his muscles slap onto the ground forcefully. His eyes shoot open then immediately close to block out the bitter spotlights he’s grown familiar with from Yu-Topia. Except he shouldn’t be _there_ , he should be in bed with Vicchan, trying to recover from another exhausting spin practice earlier that day. Yuuri would think that this is just a bad dream, but you can’t feel blood rushing to forming bruises when you’re dreaming.

Yuuri rolls off of his shoulder onto his back to relieve some of the throbbing deep in his flesh, but this only causes him to reposition his leg and feel bursts of ache in his ankle.

“Ahh! _Kuso_!”

He inhales sharply and folds his arms behind him to allow himself to sit up, breathing heavily. _Why was he so tired? He was sleeping fine just a moment before_.

“Oi! Viktor, _Ты в порядке_?”

Yuuri opens his eyes again and quickly reels his head to see a sturdily built man skating towards him with a small boy trailing cautiously behind. Yuuri feels tears welling at the corners of his eyes from the throbbing in his ankle and looks down at the ice when the man kneels beside him, his figure blocking some of the light shining in Yuuri’s face. The way the man speaks is gravely when he raises his voice in the slurred language that Yuuri kept in the back of his mind since he was younger. It’s still the same nonsensical mess that scared him as a kid. Yuuri didn’t expect his switch to be tonight after so many years, but he was not going to be a blubbering mess like last time. All of this was very new, though. Stephan and his wife were not here and this new person looks so much more aggressive that anyone Yuuri has ever met before.

He breathes in to calm himself down and gestures to himself to try to explain what’s happening to the burly adult. “My name is Katsuki Yuuri and I’m from Japan. I think there’s something wrong with his ankle,” Yuuri points to the black skate that puts pressure on the swelling, “I made him fall when we switched placees… sorry.”

He looks at the man who shows he understands the situation by nodding his head and turning to the small boy to yell in their foggy language. Yuuri watches the boy skate to the sidelines and dash off behind the rink’s doors, probably to get help or a first aid kit, hopefully. He suddenly feels an arm wrap around his back and under his arms that lift him up smoothly off the ice and onto his feet. _Thank god, I’m an ice skater, or this would be a lot worse_. Yuuri clings to the man’s arm for support as they slowly make their way to one of the rink’s door where the boy left just a moment ago.

Silvery clusters of hair swing in front of his eyes like a curtain and Yuuri instinctively reaches his hand up to sweep them behind his ear, but they only rest for a few seconds before falling in front of his face again. His soulmate’s hair has grown a lot since the last time they traded places. Yuuri inspects the grey tendrils and is reminded of the spider webs that he’d catch sight of in the markets and buildings of Hasetsu.

His mother always told him that he shouldn’t kill or be afraid of spiders because they bring good luck in the morning when you see them. That small superstition always made Yuuri feel protected when he would walk to school or Yu-Topia at the break of dawn, with the little arachnids keeping him safe from the world and what could harm him. He knows it’s just a story to comfort children, but if it makes him happy then why shouldn’t he believe it? His soulmate’s hair somehow gave him the exact same feelings of comfort and security that the shining, delicate webs would bring him. Yuuri allows the silver to stay where it is.

He’s wobbly on his feet, partially because of his injured ankle, and partially because of his incredible change in height. He’s probably forty centimeters taller than normal and it has a major impact on his equilibrium. ‘ _So, he’s a figure skater’_ , Yuuri mentally recaps to himself as he crosses over the door’s step with the man’s help and limps to one of the open benches covered in scattered bags and bottles. _At least if I ever become famous he’ll be familiar with me_.

Yuuri sets himself on the cool seat and stretches his leg out in front of him, resting his skate gently on the ground, trying to put as little pressure as possible on his foot. The man kneels down and begins to unlace the black laces on the skate, and with care and precision, slips it off his foot in one smooth move that is both a relief and a shot of pain for his ankle. Yuuri grimaces and bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from tearing up. The man sets his skate down beside him on the bench when the petit boy from before races back in with a first aid kit and another older man in his wake.

He resembles the one kneeling beside Yuuri, with rough features and grey facial hair from old age, but his face is more gentle as he curves his mouth into a smile and holds his hand out to Yuuri, delivering a few lines in his churning language. He has an interesting hat as well, like a paperboy cap from western movies Yuuri would watch with his family. Yuuri doesn’t hesitate to take his hand in greeting, shaking it up and down a couple times and providing a strained smile behind the tension he has in his foot. The old man turns to the boy and takes the medical kit from his hands, removing a frozen ice pack that must have been placed their recently, and a roll of athlete’s gauze.

The man with the cap hands off the ice pack and gauze to the old skater who immediately sets it on Yuuri’s ankle and wraps it tightly, wound by wound. Yuuri grips the edge of the bench and feels the blood in his fingers build in pressure, hair falling in his eyes again from keeping his focus on his lap, trying to dam up the water in his eyes. He was _not_ going to embarrass himself like last time. These people probably know his soulmate well and he wants to make better first impressions than how he did when he was younger. Yuuri breathes in and out through the pain and tries to push the hair behind his ears like before, only to have it resist and settle back in his face. ‘ _Long hair is such a hassle_ ,’ Yuuri thinks irritably to himself as he attempts again, fruitlessly, to remove the grey from his view.

“здесь.”

Yuuri looks up from the black jeans he’s wearing, covered in ice shavings, and turns his head to the right to see a tiny boy, no older than five, staring up at him with warm blue eyes and a crimson ribbon in his hand. The boy is petit and almost looks like a girl with pale, porcelain skin and glossy blond hair that make his eyes appear even lighter. He’s dressed in a typical skate uniform like how Yuuri remembers from his younger days, black tights and a workout jacket with gloves to protect your hands from the rawness of the ice. But this kid was decked out in a full cheetah print jacket with matching gloves _and_ skates all with various sizes and colors of spots. Yuuri had never seen printed skates outside of magazines and television, so this flamboyantly dressed preschooler made quite the impression on him. 

_“_ _здесь,”_ he repeats and holds out his hand closer to him. Yuuri takes the ribbon and smooths it in his fingers, running the silky fabric along the roughness of his callouses and noticing the difference in textures. He glances up at the boy and raises an eyebrow in uncertainty. _What do I do with this_?

The child peers up at the man in the cap like he’s going to ask a question before suddenly turning back to Yuuri. “твои волосы.” Yuuri shakes his head from side to side to try and show that he doesn’t understand.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re trying to say,” he explains in Japanese that he knows the boy doesn’t speak, but talking gives Yuuri a little bit of comfort. The boy furrows his brow and snatches the red ribbon from Yuuri’s grip, making Yuuri stare in surprise when the kid climbs up on the bench behind him and grips his shoulders to steady himself. Yuuri feels tiny hands running along his head and folding the hair away from his face and out of his eyes. It was then that Yuuri realizes what the ribbon was for when he could feel his hair being pulled gently back into a single group and wrapped with the fabric several times before being tied of. This kid was surprisingly nimble with his hands for his young age.

The boy steps down carefully and goes back to the man with the cap’s side where he clings to his pant leg, hiding his face in the material. The man rubs his blond hair lovingly and Yuuri wonders if they’re related somehow. He could be family taking his grandson to his skating lessons, like how Yuuri’s parents and sister did for him when he couldn’t go alone.

“ _Arigatou gozaimasu_ ,” Yuuri smiles at the child, glad that he doesn’t have to worry about hair like mist in his vision anymore.

He feels a pat on his knee and notices the man that wrapped his foot standing up with the remainder of gauze and handing it off to the man with the cap. They exchange a quick conversation while Yuuri examines his bandaging, but their tones sound calm so he doesn’t allow himself to worry about the content, which is most likely about him.

His foot is taped from the pad all the way past his ankle with bright pink sports gauze that Yuuri thinks is supposed to look appealing, but all the color does is stings his eyes before he glances back at the two men still engrossed in their conversation. Unsure of what to do with himself, Yuuri analyzes the dark blue nail polish chipped on his nails and is reminded of the last time he was in this situation. His soulmate had red on before which made his skin look soft with blush, but blue makes him paler and created a different feeling, although not an unwelcomed one. It’s like warm milk that you would boil in winter to fight away the frost and bring heat to your chest; that moment plastered on a person which brings the exact same cozy comfort. Yuuri feels blood rush to his cheeks before calming himself down and reflecting on what he _should_ be doing instead of studying his mate’s skin tone.  

“Excuse me,” he mumbles toward the men, who either didn’t hear him or were too enthralled in their discussion to pay him any mind. Yuuri notices that every so often one of them would gesture in his direction, so he knows now that he is being thoroughly discussed. The blond boy looks him over from behind the cover of the cap man’s pant leg and Yuuri gives him a small wave that earns him a soft blush from the child. “Hi,” he starts in cautious English he remembers from class, “what language do you speak?”

The kid steps up closer to him and fidgets with the hem of his printed jacket, but doesn’t seen nervous in the slightest as he looks Yuuri in the eyes directly. “Вы говорите странно.” Yuuri sighs in frustration, but smiles nonetheless. “I speak Japanese. Ja-pa-nese,” he stretches the word out hopefully to help the boy to understand what he’s trying to say. The kid furrows his eyebrows at Yuuri and swings his arm around to point at the older, balding skater’s jacket with a little patch on the side that Yuuri didn’t notice at first. The patch has white, red, and blue stripes stitched into it to display the flag of Russia, which Yuuri has seen many times before in his world studies class. The boy huffs at him like he can’t believe he has to explain what country they’re in to an _older_ skater.

“Oh. So, you’re Russian. Yeah, I know absolutely nothing about that language,” he switches back to Japanese, talking in English gives him a headache. Yuuri scoots himself over on the bench and pats the seat beside him, motioning for the boy to join him. The kid eagerly steps forward and hops on the bench, swinging his legs back and forth with his skates skimming the ground. It’s absolutely adorable.

Yuuri thinks back to the posters scattered in his room that feature different Russian skating champions he’s admired for years, specifically one skater that outshines the rest by an unfathomable margin. Viktor Nikiforov is one of the main reasons that Yuuri loves skating so much in the first place. He wants to be able to move with the same fluidity and grace that he sees from Viktor in competitions which entraps the audience in an unbreakable performance. Yuuri hopes to skate on the same ice as him when he becomes a professional and enters higher up competitions.  It’ll be interesting to have a Russian soulmate who also figure skates. He’ll most likely know all about Viktor which will give another topic of interest between the both of them.

_Unless…_

Yuuri’s eyes widen as he considers the circumstances of what’s happened so far. His soulmate is a Russian figure skating boy with silver hair and, based on his height, probably within his late teens, allowing him to be close to the senior division age group. There aren’t many people who fit into all of those descriptions. _‘There is absolutely no way,’_ he chides himself, _‘that Viktor Nikiforov, the infamous skating champion, could somehow be connected to me. Especially not by being soulmates_.’  Yuuri sighs under his breath and drowns himself in watching the rhythm of the boy swinging his skates back and forth. His daydreams can be saved for another time. ‘ _Completely ridiculous_.’

A familiar bubbling rises up in his chest and Yuuri closes his eyes to let the feeling pass him over. He flutters his eyelids open to see that he’s leaning against his bed on the floor in his room, Vicchan resting in his lap comfortably. A warm dog on your legs is always a comforting welcome. “Hey there Vicchan, was my soulmate kind to you?” The poodle barks affectionately and licks a stripe up along Yuuri’s cheek. “Haha! Glad to hear you enjoyed yourself,” he chuckles and scratches Vicchan behind the ears. Doziness settles over him in a drawn-out yawn which makes Yuuri realize the time. He still has practice tomorrow which he’ll definitely need sleep for. He ushers Vicchan off his lap and sets his glasses on his desk, then slumps into his bed, pulling the covers over himself to block out the spring coolness _. Guess I’ll have to start learning Russian_.

 

“ _Yuuri_!”

Yuuri groans into his pillow and tries to pretend he can’t hear his mother outside of his bedroom door, although she does this almost every morning. “Yuuri, it’s time to get up! Minako said she wanted you early today for practice, so hurry and get dressed.” He hears his mom step down the hall, then pause, and skip back to his door. “Also, clean off your desk! If you lose another class assignment because your papers are everywhere then your teachers will start calling us, and your father hates conferences.”

Yuuri crawls out from beneath his covers and stretches his arms above his head. “Alright, mom! I’ll be down in a second.” He steps toward his desk to find his glasses and fumbles along papers and books to feel for them ‘My desk isn’t that bad.’ Yuuri’s hand brushes against his pencil cup, effectively knocking it down and scattering pens and mechanical pencils across his assignments and a few onto the floor.

‘ _Damnit_ ’

He ignores the pens until his fingers find the frame of his glasses and Yuuri sets them on the bridge on his nose, bringing his room into clarity. Maybe his mom is right. Yuuri’s desk is covered in stacks of papers that he swore he would sort into the correct subjects days ago but never got around to doing it, and random books from his classes as well as half-finished ones he set down and forgot about weeks before _. This will take a while_. Yuuri proceeds to get dressed in his ballet clothes for the day before examining his desk and mentally sorting the piles out.

 ‘That one is scrap paper, that one is graded Japanese essays, and this one is old English dialogue sheets…’

“ _Yuuri_! Don’t be late or Minako-san will scold you like last time,” Hiroko trumpets down the corridor before returning to her customers.

“Coming!”

Yuuri drags over the trash bin resting under his desk to be more out in the open and hurriedly bundles the unneeded paper piles into a single stack before shoving them in the bin to be taken out when he comes home later. He promises to himself that he’ll pick up the pens when he comes back before snatching his ballet bag off the foot of his bed and rushing out the door with Vicchan in his wake.

 

 

Viktor opens his eyes and squints at the scalding light bouncing off the ice and throughout the rink coming from the building’s spotlights. _The dark bedroom was much more pleasant_. To his right, he hears Yakov in his overly gruff voice talking with one of the regulars at the rink who Viktor never learned the name of. His grandson takes beginner lessons, though. He’s pretty good for a five-year-old. Viktor rubs at his eyes and massages the bridge of his nose, already feeling a headache beginning to form from the strain on his vision.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Viktor removes his hands and looks down at the leopard-clad skater seated next to him who has a confused look on his face. Yurio was always very sweet to Viktor and everyone else less he gets irritated or upset in any way, then he was the full wrath of hell placed into a small child. Viktor loves watching him skate though, because it reminds him of when he was at that age where all you want to do is make someone proud with what you’ve accomplished, and Yurio always wanted to have Viktor watch and praise him.

Yuri is his real name, but since Viktor considered his soulmate’s name to be very special and unique to him, he asked Yurio if he could use a nickname after they met and became closer together on the rink and he graciously obliged. Plus, nicknames show a special relationship. Viktor thinks it’s cute when other people will use ‘Yurio’ and the petit boy will turn beet red and yell that only Viktor was allowed to use the name for him, it made them seen closer in his eyes.

Viktor grins down at him and launches himself into a hug that nearly forces both of them off the bench before he pulls Yurio closer to him.

 “Yurio! You finally met him! Was he kind to you? Did Yakov yell at him? And-“ Viktor feels a discomfort in his foot and glances down at the wrappings on his ankle. “-did he get hurt?” He furrows his brow in worry and looks at Yurio for an answer, but the five-year-old just grins and hugs him around the middle with the grip of a viper.

“Vitya! I missed you so much! Your weird boy can’t speak Russian, he’s like a baby or something. I bet my soulmate will be much smarter,” he chirps giddily. Viktor rubs at his head. “I bet they will be, too.”

“Viktor! Back so soon?”

He looks up at Yakov and Yurio’s grandfather. A smile stretches across his lips. “I couldn’t stay too long, I would miss Yurio too much.” He feels Yurio nuzzle his cheek closer into his side. “And also, what happened to my ankle? Is it twisted?”

“It’s only a small sprain from falling, so don’t worry about it,” Yakov states. “Your _родственную душу_ was much more calm than I would have thought, but I didn’t talk to him a lot. That was mainly Yuri.”

“Hmm,” Viktor replies thoughtfully.

He tries to move his ankle a bit and earns spikes of nerves running up through his skin. _Good job, Viktor, the second time you’ve swapped and he’s in pain the whole time._ He brushes a lock of hair behind his ear and realizes something is off. His fingers trace up to a ribbon-tied bow that loosely captures his hair from his face and a soft grin forms across his lips. _Yuuri must have disliked the hair in his eyes_ , he thinks to himself and finds the thought of his soulmate tying his hair up to be very cute.

“Yurio,” he gets the boy’s attention, “did you give the boy a ribbon to put my hair back?” Yurio nods and lets go of Viktor’s waist. “Yeah, it kept going in his face and he didn’t like it, so I tried to give him the ribbon from my bag, but I tied his hair because he didn’t know how to.” Viktor blushes and grins down at him. “Well, thank you for helping him, Yurio. I’m sure he liked having you do that for him.” Yurio beams and nods his head in agreement.

“Vitya, I’m going to call your parents and have one of them come to pick you up, I doubt you can drive with your ankle the way it is,” Yakov says then turns to take the call away from the group. Viktor nods and thanks him as he leaves. He’ll be out of practice for a few weeks while recovering, but that’ll give him extra time to focus on school work and further himself in Japanese. When he finally meets his soulmate, Viktor should at least have phrases to present himself with, or so the next note he leaves won’t have to be in English or Russian. _I left my number at the bottom of the paper, hopefully he’ll call if he can._ Viktor lets that thought seep into his mind, bringing a feeling of hope as he sets his skates in his duffle bag to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (здесь- here, твои волосы- your hair, Ты в порядке- what’s wrong?, Kuso- damnit, Вы говорите странно- you speak oddly, родственную душу- soulmate)  
> some translations for this chapter. I don't speak Russian or Japanese so if any of this is wrong then please tell me! also thank you for reading this far, bless ya soul


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ya'll have probably noticed that there are time skips in this, but to clarify for this chapter: this takes place after Viktor arrives to Hasetsu to be Yuuri's coach, sort of going along with how things take place in canon. I often lose an outsider's perspective in my writing so if anything is unclear just send a comment or message, I appreciate it!

“C’mon Yuuri! Make sure that your free leg is tucked in when you spin or it’ll throw you off.”

It had been a few months since Viktor Nikiforov, the world’s top figure skater, had traveled to Japan on a whim to take Yuuri on as his skating coach after his win at the Hasetsu On Ice competition. For Yuuri, it was his wildest dream come true, to have the skater he’s admired for so long to now be a full part of his life and to be around him every single day. And he knew Viktor enjoyed being here too, from his amazement at Japanese culture and the ecstatic look in his eyes when Yuuri would perfect a move or routine that they had worked on for days or weeks.

The previous year had been rough when he put a hiatus on his skating career after his sixth-place title at the GPF, but then Viktor arrived with a proposition that Yuuri couldn’t turn down and here they both are, Yuuri training for the competition in Russia and Viktor putting his choreographing talents to use. This is the happiest Yuuri has been since he can remember and he is determined to have Viktor for his coach as long as possible, meaning he would have to continue placing in competitions as they scale the ladder to the next Grand Prix.

Yuuri stitches his feet along the ice like embroidery, preparing for his launch into the salchow that he’s been trying to perfect for nearly an hour now, relentlessly pushing himself to keep getting back up after every failed attempt. Viktor is gracious enough to let him fray his edges and practice the move until it’s out of Yuuri’s system, which it won’t be until the jump is flawless. He places his right foot on the outside edge and twists his body to hit the spin from the front, but even at that point so early in his move Yuuri knows his momentum if flawed and he won’t make it. He almost makes three rotations before his skate hits the ice and his speed carries his shoulder to the ground in a painful collision.

He lays on the ice for a still moment, enjoying the cold on his skin that melts away the warmth of his sweat and the heat of his blood. _Get up and try again, even Yurio can do salchows_. He pushes himself up on shaky legs and stays still to give the world time to stop spinning.

“Yuuri! It’s getting late, let’s call it a day and head back,” Viktor suggests from the edge of the rink.

Yuuri skates over and takes the water bottle in Viktor’s hand, gulping down half its contents in one go. He didn’t want to leave practice with the marks of so many failed jumps on his mind, but he knows that when Viktor puts a stop to their practice, it’s usually for Yuuri’s own good. Although, it isn’t easy to walk away from a failed move that he knows Viktor mastered when he was fifteen and Yuuri can’t even complete as a grown man. His shoulders sag with the heaviness of disappointment. He steps off the rink and places his guards on his blades before heading with Viktor to the bench room to take his skates off. Yuuri is usually pretty silent around this time, mainly from fatigue and thinking over his routines, and partially in order to let Viktor chat on about new choreography or what training they should add in.

Viktor mentions the hotpot Yuuri’s mom was planning on serving tonight and Yuuri feels a spark of warmth in his chest. Viktor always knows what to say to get Yuuri’s mind off of skating and practice, which Yuuri is very thankful for, considering that he most often overthinks himself into an anxiety attack when pondering his own faults as a skater.

They walk home instead of jog, savoring the flushed spring breeze brushing across the streets and buildings, coating Hasetsu in a glaze of a promising summertime. Nearly a month ago, when Viktor had first arrived, the town was painted in an unexpected snowfall that quickly dried away almost as suddenly as it came. Yuuri’s parents have joked with Viktor that he had carried the Russian winter with him when he came and the snow was his causing. Viktor had laughed and agreed, enjoying the idea of bringing a piece of his home country to Japan. Yuuri liked the idea, too.

When they arrive at the onsen, Yuuri and Viktor make a beeline for the dining room by following the scent of roasting meat and stewed vegetables. His parents and Mari just sat down around the table when they both come in and immediately apologize for being late which Hiroko waves it off like normal and tells them to sit. She knows how hard they work and doesn’t expect Yuuri and Viktor to be on time always. Yuuri can’t indulge in meals like he used to, now that he has a strict diet that needs maintaining at all times, but even a small amount of the hot pot is enough to keep him satisfied for the rest of the night.

“Yuuri, after this let’s take a dip in the springs. The water will take the soreness out of your muscles in no time,” Viktor proposes over bites of stewed mushrooms. Yuuri nods in agreement and indulges himself in the thought of a steaming bath to wash away the ache of practice earlier. That thought alone already makes him feel better.

When they all finish, Yuuri excuses himself from the table and heads to his room to change out of his clothes while Viktor heads down the hall to do the same with Makkachin bouncing close behind him. Yuuri steps past the door frame, closing the door to his room, and starts stripping himself of his shirt, already imagining the water steam fogging his eyesight. He throws his shirt to the side of his bed and glances at the mirror to the left of his desk along the wall, being more and more surprised each day with how lean he’s become from taking skating up again. He smiles slightly, proud of the work he’s put in, but it quickly fades when he starts examining the finer details of his arms and hips. A spectrum of violets, blues, and sickly yellows are woven along his skin, marking the places where he falls on the ice the most. His elbows, hips, shoulders, and even a red flush on his hands from collision upon collision with the ice. 

Yuuri grazes a fairly large bruise on his side with his fingers and winces when needles of pain trickle over his skin. He didn’t even feel any of these until he knew they were there. His long-sleeved workout shirt did a pretty good job at hiding all of these up until now, he’ll have to wear it more often. This is one thing he remembers not missing about skating constantly, how self-conscious he would feel about his body being stained in colors that shouldn’t be there. His feelings haven’t changed since then. Yuuri furrows his brow at the figure in the mirror and feels an emptiness in his stomach although he just finished dinner a moment ago; it’s a sick feeling that he is well acquainted with.

“Yuuri, are you ready to head downstairs yet?”

Yuuri jumps in surprise at the sudden knocking at his door and his mind starts racing. ‘ _Viktor shouldn’t see me like this’_ , he decides quickly to himself, taking another look at the indigo blotches on his arms.

“Err, actually I think I’ll skip the onsen for tonight. You go down without me and we’ll do it together another time,” Yuuri calls at the door, hoping that Viktor will go easily and won’t ask questions. Of course, if he did _that_ then he wouldn’t be Viktor. There’s a pause on the other side of the door and Yuuri uneasily reaches for his shirt on the bed comforter.

“Yuuri, I’m coming in, okay?”

Viktor pops his head by the side of the door and Yuuri barley has any time to try and cover his chest and torso with his shirt before the Russian steps in and closes the door behind him softly. “Viktor!” Viktor smiles at the sight of Yuuri covering himself shyly although he has nothing to cover and they’ve bathed in the springs naked together before. There’s also the thick blush covering his cheeks that makes the situation more laughable. “It’s usually not like you to pass on a bath with me,” Viktor explains to an uncomfortably fidgeting Yuuri, “so, I came in to see what was…wrong.”

Viktor’s sight lands on a dark patch of skin on Yuuri’s elbow that his shirt and hands fail to cover up completely and Yuuri knows that he noticed. His hand instinctively goes to hide the bruise and Yuuri begins to feel nervousness wash over him.

“I just fell during practice a lot today and figured that a bath wouldn’t be the best thing for me.”

 Yuuri refuses to make eye contact as Viktor steps forward and hovers his hand cautiously over his covered arm, treating his skin like glass that could shatter at the slightest disturbance. Yuuri doesn’t look up when Viktor guides his shirt-clenched hand away from his chest, fully revealing the discolored bruises on his hips and the rest of his arms.

“This is why you don’t want to go?” Viktor questions, already fully knowing the answer. The tone of his voice is as if he’s asking about the weather, not covered up skating injuries.

Yuuri can just barely feel an increase in pressure on his hand from Viktor’s fingers holding it lightly. He definitely wasn’t hoping for an intervention on his own unsound self-image by Viktor of all people. Time doesn’t seem to show him any sympathy when it comes to examining his faults. 

“It’s nothing,” Yuuri takes his hand away and begins to put his shirt back on. Viktor shouldn’t have to see him like this. “I just have to wait for them to heal before showing any skin in the springs.”

He’s stopped with his sleeves mid-way on his forearms. Yuuri glances up and immediately meets Viktor’s eyes with his own, something he tries to avoid but shouldn’t. His eyes are the most reflective view of what he fails to hide with his smile. Viktor runs his fingers along the bridge of Yuuri’s palm and brings his hand closer to his face, ignoring the spreading blush on Yuuri’s cheeks and ears from the closeness between them.

“Viktor, what are you…?”

Viktor plants a light kiss on the rawness of Yuuri’s palm, still flushed and sore from the sharpness of the ice, then hovers his lips along his skin and repeats the action, giving just as much care as the first one. Yuuri stares on, captivated by the rise and fall of Viktor’s lips against his flesh that patterns with the steady breathing in his lungs. He usually shies away from most physical affection, but Viktor’s cirrus touches and nostalgic eyes are the two things that bring Yuuri solace like no person ever has before. It’s ridiculous how apprehensive he is about receiving that solace, though.

Viktor blinks hazily at him and smirks against his hand. “Yuuri, do you remember what I said when you were first beginning your Eros routine I had shown you?” He tries to think back but the heat of breath on his skin doesn’t allow him much concentration for something so vague that happened so long ago. He shakes his head and mutters a soft “no” as Viktor goes back to kissing trails down his thumb and heading to his wrist.

“I told you that as your coach, my job is to make you feel confident within yourself when you forget to do it on your own…” Another peck and Yuuri feels his breathing slow even more. “So, this is me, reminding you that any marks you may get, whether on your body or your mind, are manifestations of the effort you give to show the world, and myself, that Katsuki Yuuri is a force to be reckoned with.” Viktor raises his arm and rest his lips on the violet bruise painted near Yuuri’s elbow, as soft and warm as smoke.

Yuuri feels his chest clench and his eyes water as Viktor travels to his shoulder to see to the bruises there, then back down along his arm to his palm like the start. Yuuri lets the tears flow freely now, uncaring that Viktor can see his emotion on the surface. He sees surprise wash over Viktor’s face when he begins to hiccup through the closing of his throat.

“Yuuri?”

Yuuri leans in slowly and grabs for the front of Viktor’s onsen robe, pulling him closer so he can bury his face in the crook of the Russian man’s neck, apathetic to how he’s only smearing the tears on his cheeks. Viktor is stiff at first from the intimate show of affection, but quickly wraps his arms around Yuuri’s back and holds him close. He allows Yuuri to cry for a moment, riding out the emotions and giving his frame as support to keep Yuuri from sinking. Yuuri sniffs and quiets himself down, running his fingers on the fabric of Viktor’s robes pressed between the both of them and thinking how soft they are on him.

“Thank you for being here with me,” Yuuri whispers, his own humid breath bouncing off Viktor’s skin and back onto him.

“I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.” 

* * *

 

 

They decided not to do the onsen tonight. Yuuri didn’t want to risk his family seeing him blotched red from crying. Viktor reminded him that he was only just a hallway away if Yuuri ever needed anything, then left to let him sleep. Emotions are a tiring thing. Although Yuuri is physically and emotionally exhausted, his mind refuses to give him any leverage on sleep, instead leaving him to replay the day’s events in his head.

Viktor is always unconditionally kind to him in every sense, but today is the first time in a long time that Yuuri has ever really felt _seen_. Not during competitions, nor with his family, or even analyzing himself in front of a mirror, just standing shirtless before of his childhood idol with his flaws colored on his skin. It wasn’t just the disturbing bruises that made him so reluctant to show himself to Viktor, it was what they brought along with them. The violet marks remind him that he still isn’t good enough to keep himself standing on his feet. He isn’t good enough to land his jumps that he’s known fifteen-year-olds to perfect themselves, not good enough to place highly in the Grand Prix, not good enough to keep himself from going into a depression after failing, not good enough to have self-confidence, not enough for Viktor to be his coach…

This is what bruises are to Yuuri. Everything he dislikes about himself stitched on his skin that he can’t erase and can barely cover. But Viktor… Viktor didn’t shy away. When Yuuri was younger his mother or Yuko would wince at the marks when they saw them and tell him to wait till they go away on their own, but it wasn’t really that simple for him. When Viktor looked at his skin it was as if he could see exactly what Yuuri was feeling, and what he saw didn’t make him uncomfortable or look for a way out. He stared, unblinking, in the face of Yuuri’s own pent up insecurities, and smiled. No one had told him before that bruises were reflections on work, something to be proud of, something he shouldn’t cover up. Viktor was the first.

He kissed him as well. Of course, it wasn’t in a romantic sense, but Yuuri’s heart still raced along with every gentle peck. Physical contact isn’t something he’s the most comfortable with, but Viktor’s lips on his skin was like water running down a dried riverbed, it was calming and beautiful. _He_ is calming and beautiful. Viktor is someone Yuuri has always wanted as a part in his life, and now that he’s here, he never wants to let him go.

 Yuuri’s heartbeat quickens suddenly and he opens his eyes in the darkness of his room. A thought has swept into his head like an breeze he never knew he was so familiar with, it’s warm but carries an undercurrent of a storm approaching. It’s leaden and stifling. Yuuri flips onto his stomach and buries his face deep into the fabric of his pillow in an attempt to drown his senses, but receives little results. He can feel the clouds swarming in his chest that bring fear and panic in their winds, cycling around each other sedately. _Falling in love with Viktor Nikiforov is not an option_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope ya'll are enjoying this so far! I think this fic is about half-way done now if my writing estimates are accurate, so thanks for hanging in there to get this far. Also, thank you all for leaving comments or kudos! It really makes my day to see those :D


	6. Chapter 6

Three days have passed and Viktor is beginning to become impatient and somehow more socially needy than usual, to his surprise. Yuuri has been relentlessly avoiding him whenever possible, which happened to be all hours outside of some chosen meals and training practice. Viktor assumes that he’s simply embarrassed from the talk they had, which is totally understandable, but the continuous absence of Yuuri’s voice and company is really starting to drain him. It’s as if whenever he enters speaking range, Yuuri immediately absconds to a different room or outside to jog to keep their distance. If this leads on any longer Viktor is going to have an emotional breakdown from a lack of attention. He’s usually fine with being just with himself, but Yuuri having disappeared from his daily life has become increasingly depressing. This is why Viktor is outside his student’s bedroom door at nearly a quarter to twelve, his waiting for Yuuri to come back around completely gone and his emotional care levels at an all-time high.

He threw on a pair of the green robes given to him at the beginning of his stay in Hasetsu, so as to not waltz around the Inn in only briefs, and immediately went to Yuuri’s room after trying in vain to sleep for nearly an hour. Insomnia and overthinking are lovers in the regard that one can’t be without the other. This seems to apply to Yuuri as well considering the light seeping under his doorframe and into the shadows of the hallway. Viktor raises his hand and raps his knuckles on the wood several times.

“Yuuri? Are you awake? Can I come in?”

Silence.

“Yuuri?” he draws out pleadingly, this time a bit louder. Still no response. Viktor reaches for the door handle and turns it quietly before peaking his head out on the side of the door. A desk lamp illuminates the furniture and walls of the room, casting everything in muted, amber shadows that sit silently. A window near the bed on the right allows for moonlight to travel in and join the crown. Yuuri’s at his desk, leaning back in a chair with headphones in and his eyes closed, but not sleeping, his breathing is regular if just quiet. Viktor almost doesn’t want to disturb him while he’s so relaxed. The moon and lamplight on his figure is almost ethereal in the way it catches on his frame, unmasking little details that daytime doesn’t do justice to. The curve in his cupid’s bow, roundness of his cheeks, wisps of hair that rest close to his eyes. Too bad he’s here on a mission, or Viktor could watch this scene until he falls asleep against the door.

“Yuuri!” he says loud enough to break through the sound in Yuuri’s earbuds. The Japanese man jumps in surprise before seeing Viktor standing patiently by his door for him. He takes out his earbuds and pauses the music on his phone for good measure, glancing at the on-screen clock.

“Viktor, it’s nearly midnight. I thought you were asleep.”

Viktor steps in and closes the door behind him softly. “I couldn’t seem to drift off long enough to get any rest.” Yuuri sets his earbuds aside on his desk and focuses on the fabric of his pajama bottoms, having them become suddenly more interesting than they were a few moments ago. “Yeah,” he says quietly, “I know the feeling.”

Viktor feels a stone drop in his stomach and shuffles his feet anxiously. He almost never gets nervous around anything or anyone, but Yuuri has a special way of knotting his insides and making his heart beat faster than it ever has on the ice before. Yuuri is an enigma in how he affects Viktor’s emotions and thoughts, an enigma in almost everything actually. How he moves on the ice is an incomprehensible theory within itself.

He breathes in gently, stifling his nerves as he places his feet forward to stand directly in front of Yuuri before kneeling down to the wooden floors where he’s in the perfect position to rest his head on Yuuri’s lap. The Japanese man stiffens at the close contact and his breathing grows even quieter than before.

“I miss you…you’ve been so absent for the past few days.” Viktor presses his cheek harder into Yuuri’s thigh as he notices the slight blue stripes on his pajama pants that weren’t noticeable at first. “It gets lonely without you with me.”

Yuuri releases a shaky breath before relaxing under Viktor’s touch. A wave of relief rushes over Viktor, worried that Yuuri would block himself off. He feels fingers at the base of his neck that run through his hair to his bangs, then circle back to the start.

“I’m sorry,” Yuuri whispers into the silence between them. “I’m sorry that I’ve been avoiding all of you. I’ve had a lot on my mind recently, that’s all.” Viktor closes his eyes and allows himself to seep into the feeling of Yuuri’s fingers dancing along the back of his head.

“Is there anything you would like to talk about?” he asks.

“No,” Yuuri hesitates, “not today.”

Viktor is disappointed at hearing that, but knows that Yuuri will come to him when he’s comfortable. All he has to do is be patient, and he would wait forever for Yuuri.

“Alright, not today. But maybe someday?”

The fingers on his hair pause for a brief moment before returning to their comforting rhythm.

“Yes, maybe someday.”

Viktor feels sleep pulling him deeper and deeper into the musky light of the room. “Okay, I’ll wait for you then. But, please, can I see you more often than just at practice?”

Yuuri’s hand pulls his bangs away from his forehead and Viktor opens his eyes to look up at him. There’s blush and a soft smile on Yuuri’s face whose brightness puts the moonlight in the window to shame instantly. “I’ll try not to isolate myself anymore, I promise,” Yuuri lets his words hang in the air between them. Viktor smiles and leans into the velvety touch of Yuuri’s fingers against his forehead, allowing his eyelids to close and letting himself get swept away with the current of drowsiness.

“Thank you.”

* * *

 

They stay like that for a while before Viktor finally falls asleep, head still resting on Yuuri’s lap and Yuuri serenely pushing his hair back and forth like wind through grass. Viktor is a quiet sleeper. The only way Yuuri could ever tell that he’s there is the hair beneath his palm and the warm breath against his thigh every few seconds. He honestly did not expect Viktor to talk to him tonight, but he’s glad for it in a way. Yuuri had missed spending his time with Viktor, although _he_ was the one distancing himself. It was just easier to be alone than to bear the guilt of seeing Viktor constantly, someone that he can’t have. Yuuri has dwelled on the similarities between Viktor and his soulmate, at least, from what little he knows about the two, over and over again to find the one distinction to prove that they are entirely different people. So far, he’s found nothing but likenesses.

 Both are Russian figure skaters, after skating internationally for so long, Yuuri figured out the strange language he heard as a child pretty easily. Viktor and his soulmate both had long grey hair at a young age, but then again, Yuuri wasn’t sure how common that was in Russia and claiming a soulmate based on that alone is ridiculous. Both he and Viktor have striking blue eyes. Their eyes are the main reason Yuuri is even questioning this at all in the first place. Of all the things that Yuuri would ever want to keep in his memory, the catch of his breath when seeing his soulmate’s reflection for the first time holds a place for being most important.

Besides from these things, Yuuri doesn’t know much about his soulmate, considering they only ever switched twice, which is a fairly small number compared to how normally people will switch every five years or so. He’s only known Viktor for a few months as well. Definitely not enough time to know enough about him to make accusations that his mind already seems to be set on. Yuuri knows nearly nothing of Viktor’s childhood and he never mentions his soulmate, but asking him would be too forward. These past few days have been a mental and emotional battleground with Yuuri’s self-deprecating thoughts and fruitless hopes pinned against each other.

The simple truth is: he doesn’t want to hurt himself with false hopes, no matter how convincing those hopes can be. What if all of his pent-up childhood admiration for Viktor has just morphed into distinct qualities between him and the few meetings with his soulmate. What if Yuuri actually disclosed all of these thoughts to Viktor, only to be shot down by him revealing that he has a soulmate of his own that he can’t wait to see again after he’s done couching Yuuri for the Prix?  He doesn’t want to make bets on something that could turn into an irreversible disaster. Relying on his own diluted memories to act as evidence for something this important is a risky move he isn’t willing to take.

That’s why avoiding Viktor was easier than facing the facts. The fact that Viktor has a soulmate that isn’t _him_ and that Yuuri is basically cheating on his own soulmate because he’s in love with someone else. Although some soulmates will turn out to be platonically matched, it’s not as common as couples or groups being romantically predestined. Yuuri doesn’t develop feelings for people often. Not just romantic, but friendly as well. Becoming attached to others was just never in his nature, that’s why he keeps Phichit so close to heart and knows that if Viktor ever left he’d be more devastated than he can even imagine.

So, when Viktor left him alone to sleep after allowing Yuuri to cry in his arms, and Yuuri thought over the situation for longer than he should have, panic began to set in. He’s not meant for Viktor Nikiforov. Yuuri came to that conclusion the moment after his breath hitched as the thought entered his head. Viktor has a soulmate somewhere else who he’ll meet one day, or has already met, and that person isn’t Yuuri, he’s positive of this no matter how much it tears at his insides.

Yuuri breathes in to lessen the ache in his chest as he stares at the shadows painted on his walls with lamplight. Viktor is peaceful under his fingers stroking the nape of his neck up along the back, his hair like cotton. They both are so domestic like this, which fills Yuuri with an incredible amount of both comfort and despair. Comfort in the closeness he shares with the man resting against him, and despair in the reality that they can only be like this when he’s asleep. The waking world isn’t made for the impossible dream Yuuri has.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbles into the air. _I’m sorry that I’ve fallen in love with you_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you have any comments on how I can improve in writing then please leave a message! I love hearing constructive criticism if you have some to offer, and also, thank you all for reading this far. I'm not an amazing writer by any means, but I try my best to make readable content, so thanks for sticking through this!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for not posting often and having this chapter be so short! I have quite a lot planned for chapter 8, though, so I wanted to save most of it for then and keep this fairly small. My Mandarin class has been keeping my attention lately, but this week I'll have more time to write. Also for this chapter, Спящая красавица- sleeping beauty, if this is incorrect please comment! I don't speak Russian. Please enjoy!

The monotonous siren of his phone alarm immediately wakes Viktor from blurry residues of dreams he’s already begun to forget.

 _It’s too early to be doing anything_ , he thinks to himself as the fog in his head starts to clear. There’s a pain in his neck that wakes him up quickly as he pulls his phone out of his pocket to turn off the blaring noise. Once Viktor opens his eyes to see the screen, he realizes that he didn’t fall asleep in the warmth of his own bed last night. Instead the ache in his neck is explained by the odd position of being slumped against Yuuri’s leg for the whole of sleep with only his thigh as a pillow. Viktor isn’t really complaining considering that he slept fantastically, although he’ll definitely be dealing with a backache at practice today. The best thing is that Yuuri’s thighs still have a certain softness to them that couldn’t be worked off, it simply how Yuuri was, naturally welcoming.

He shoves his phone back into the pocket of his inn robes and buries his face into the fabric of Yuuri’s pajama pants, not wanting to get up from where he’s sitting although the ache in his legs is hostile. Viktor sighs and flips his head around to look up at Yuuri, who’s still fast asleep against the back of his desk chair, snoring softly.

His glasses had been set down the night before, probably so he wouldn’t lose them in his sleep accidentally. Viktor almost feels guilty for falling asleep on Yuuri, not allowing him to rest in his bed instead of the desk chair. Almost. Viktor would do it again in a heartbeat if it meant he’d be close to the other man like this. He wanted to sleep in Yuuri’s room the first day he came to Hasetsu to build up their student-coach relationship, but having him being so introverted proved difficult to say the least. Although, waking up to see Yuuri’s chest rise and fall with the rhythmic breathing of sleep is a great reward for reaching his goal.

“Yuuri,” he coos softly, shaking the sleeping man’s thigh back and forth to try and wake him.

“Get up, _cпящая красавица_ , we’ve got practice to get to.” Yuuri’s eyes flutter open and he instinctively reaches for the glasses set on the desk to his right before putting them on. He rubs his eyes underneath them and yawns into his palm.

“Good morning, Yuuri,” Viktor greets him gently, knowing he’s still waking up. Viktor can practically feel Yuuri’s heart stop as his eyes shoot open to look at him seated on the floor, the Russian man’s chin and arm now resting on his thigh. Yuuri had obviously forgotten him being there last night. Viktor smiles as a warm blush covers Yuuri’s cheeks and flushes up to the tips of his ears.

“G-good morning,” he stutters out. Viktor finds it incredibly endearing when Yuuri gets flustered around him, so he tries to take advantage of the many opportunities given to him to make Yuuri blush.

“Did you sleep on the floor the whole night?” Yuuri asks, concern laces through his voice.

Viktor nods against his thigh. “Yes, but don’t worry, I was comfortable.” He somehow manages to blush even harder than before which warms Viktor’s chest in a way that he knows only Yuuri can manage.

“We should, um…” Yuuri trips over his thoughts as Viktor rums small circles with his thumb near where his thigh meets his hip. _Oh, this is getting to be too much fun_. “We should get ready and head to the rink,” he finally gets out. Viktor thinks for a moment. He would much rather stay home today with Yuuri than go skate for hours, but with the new season starting they both can’t afford to waste any time away from practice. He sighs and raises himself off the floor, stretching the stiffness out from his legs.

“So anxious to get started, I see,” Viktor smirks. Sunlight streams in from the window and twists across the walls and furniture of the room, making the air look hazy. The pink patches on Yuuri’s cheeks have muted, but he still looks very uncomfortable about the situation which Viktor finds endearing, considering that they only slept in the same room together which isn’t exactly scandalous. Viktor rubs the sleep from his eyes and steps toward the door languidly, taking comfort from his bare feet stepping on the night-chilled floors.

“I’ll get dressed”, he opens the door with more sunlight from the hallway rushing in. “Meet you down stairs in ten for breakfast.” Yuuri smiles warmly in agreement, making the room brighter than it had been a moment before; he returns the gesture. Viktor closes the door behind him and heads to his own room, feeling lighter than the dust in the corridor.

During their practice Yuuri seems more focused than usual. The ice morphs under the curve of his blades into lines and loops like cursive on parchment, spelling out the routine into a language of thought and feeling. He looks weightless, Viktor thinks, moving like mist on water that twists over the surface with ease. He relaxes off to the sidelines, content to simply watch Yuuri rehearse in his own headspace without any coaching commentary for the little mistakes that don’t really matter. Although he’s become more comfortable with Viktor watching him, Yuuri will still sometimes worry too much about the critique on his routine that will cause him to overthink his movements when they should be more instinct than technical. That’s why in the beginning, Viktor was so keen on building a trusting relationship with Yuuri. If Yuuri could feel completely content with Viktor, then coaching him will be a much easier feat.

 _This is progress_ , Viktor thinks proudly as Yuuri performs another triple salchow without even a hitch in the landing. There’s no music playing in the rink, but Viktor can still hear every note clearly through the spins and glides of the Japanese man across the rink. His movement are like fingers on a piano, knowing exactly where to move to create novels of sound. The skating is almost a beautiful as Yuuri himself. Black clothing outlines the slender of his back and curve of his hips that sway to an inaudible melody, only for his body to perform. Gloves stroke the air, reaching for an invisible partner, making his hands look like smoke weaving through wind. His forehead is covered in sweat that only proves how hard he’s pushing himself to the breaking point, but never faltering, never cracking. _This_ is what Viktor came for. What he traveled to Japan for, what he left competing for. This man is what Viktor left everything behind for, because everything else can’t compare.

Yuuri has surpassed his wildest imagination of what Viktor could expect from a single person. His work drive is like nothing he’s ever seen from another competitor, or even Viktor himself. Yuuri has always realized the disadvantages he has or the setbacks that manage to find their way to him, but through and through, he strides forward, facing the world like the ocean against a cliff’s edge. Viktor finds what his own abilities lack in Yuuri. Yuuri is more driven than Viktor has ever been himself, but this just lets him know that his student will expand the skating world like no one else.

This is also what frightens Viktor the most. The fact that Yuuri has become one of the most important things in his life and that he might not be able to hold onto him for very long. He knows that Yuuri will be able to make it to the Grand Prix, that much is apparent in his eyes. What about after, though? What about when the time comes that Yuuri doesn’t need his coaching anymore and Viktor has no need to stay in Hasetsu? This is what keeps him awake some nights, mulling over the inevitability of not being needed anymore, a thought that clings thickly onto him.

The idea of returning to Russia to compete again is suffocating. Viktor wasn’t happy before, not with himself, his career, the life he was living. Meeting Yuuri changed all of that entirely. The Katsukis have welcomed him into their life like he was family, which he was grateful for. It wasn’t like he himself didn’t have a family, his parents just traveled too often and didn’t have time to see him like they used to. He’s perfectly fine with it, being by himself, or he thought he was, until he met Yuuri. He can’t return to the life he lived before, not without losing himself to skating, with a lack of feeling or spark to it. He lacked motivation, but _Yuuri_. Yuuri is his newfound motivation, his driving force that made Viktor fall in love with skating all over again because now he has a new reason for it.

When he was younger, he skated because his parents brought him into it and they saw his potential, he wanted to make them proud. Skating brought him a sense of value. He wanted to be good enough for his parents and all the others who cheered him on through competition after competition. This though process only increased after his first switch. It was the realization that there was someone made especially for him and that he would meet that person one day, and when he did, he wanted to be worthy of him. So, he won titles and went to ceremonies, and built a name for himself that no one else had ever achieved. When he meets his soulmate, he wants him to be proud.

This is also why Viktor traveled to Hasetsu so spontaneously. You would have to be blind to not see the connection Yuuri had to the small boy that Viktor had switched with only twice in his life. For one, they are both Japanese boys named Yuuri. This alone was all that Viktor really needed to book the plane ticket after watching Yuuri’s routine, on the hope that he had actually gotten lucky enough to find his soulmate that easily. He wanted to get in contact before, but traveling to a different country to try and convince someone that they might be universally tied to you is a bit of a stretch. Thank God for YouTube, though. But, as he realized on the flight over, there could possibly be more than one Yuuri in the entirety of Japan who figure skated as a child, much to his chagrin. This is what stopped him from buying wedding rings the moment he touched down in Kyushu. No matter what, he still wants to coach Yuuri to be a better skater, but if he finds out Yuuri really _is_ his soulmate in the process, then that’s one thing off his to-do list. A very important thing at that.

While preparing for the Grand Prix, Viktor has made it his mission to find out as much as he can about Yuuri before jumping to any conclusions that might get him hurt. It hasn’t been easy, but if he’s right about this, then it’ll just make it more worthwhile. Soulmates aren’t a taboo topic of conversation, but all the same it is still something that you only talk about if you’re very close to someone, especially if you talk about your own. Viktor will mention it one day, see what he can find and know if his assumptions are true or not. And if Yuuri really isn’t his, when the day comes for Viktor to return to Russia, to skating…he’ll figure it out.

“How was that?”

Viktor’s mind comes back into focus to see Yuuri panting in the middle of the rink, looking at him expectedly. He feels guilty now because he wasn’t able to fully enjoy Yuuri’s routine through the swarming thoughts in his head, especially since Yuuri is doing so well today. His forehead is drenched in sweat beading down flushed cheeks in trails and Yuuri’s chest is heaving in shallow breaths. The hem of his shirt had twisted around his hips from skating so freely, the black of his pants is still dotted with ice shavings from various falls beforehand, making the fabric dampened. To Viktor, he looks absolutely stunning.

“How did I do, Viktor?” Yuuri asks again, skating over sluggishly to the side of the rink where Viktor waits.

“Completely breathtaking, Yuuri,” he draws the vowels of Yuuri’s name over the upward curve of his lips, admiring the feeling of speaking it. Viktor hands him a water bottle set on the rink’s barrier and Yuuri takes it greedily, practically ripping the cap off before downing its contents in one go.

“Your landings are still a bit shaky, though.” Viktor grins as Yuuri splashes some of the water on his forehead and hair, slicking loose strands back from his eyes. “I know, I know,” he sighs and hands the bottle back to Viktor who sets it back in a duffle bag behind the rink’s barrier. “I think my balance isn’t completely centered in the air so when I land it’s off just a little.” His eyebrows pinch together in thought and Viktor is almost intimately familiar with this look. It’s the gleam in Yuuri’s eyes that are sparks of dedication to the rink, dedication to skating and how he’ll push himself further and further until he thinks he’s good enough. A practice session is never shortened when Yuuri finds something to fix about the routine or himself, and when the rink is closed, then Minako’s studio is the next best thing.

They’ve reached their limit today, though. Viktor’s ready for a warm meal and a night to sleep it off until they get up again tomorrow to train again. Plus, Yuuri needs to sleep off today’s work. He stretches his arms above his head and relishes in the feeling of his muscles loosening, realizing how stiff he’s been.

“Yuuri, let’s stop for now and head back for the day,” Viktor sits back on a bench behind him to start untying his skates. Yuuri shakes his head and leans against the barrier. “I can go for a little longer,” he tells Viktor, “I want to keep working on my jumps before we head home.”

“You always want to keep working on something, Yuuri,” Viktor starts on his other skate. “What kind of coach would I be if I let you drain yourself dry every day?”

He knows that Yuuri can do more, but knowing that you can do something doesn’t mean that you always should. Viktor’s skates slide easily into his bag and he motions for Yuuri to come sit beside him on the bench with a pat of his hand. Telling him what to do doesn’t bring Viktor pleasure at all, but the nervous feeling that Yuuri will run himself to a breaking point tears him away from any guilt that he feels. The Japanese man stills at the rink’s entrance, hesitation sketched on his features of his obvious reluctance to quit, which is how he sees it, but knowing your limits is not quitting, knowing your limits keeps the path to victory open. Viktor only wishes that Yuuri would realize this more. Yuuri steps over the rink’s edge after a moment of thinking it over and plops down next to Viktor on the cool metal of the bench, fatigue apparent in the drag of his movements, he begins to unlace his skates.

They sweep themselves into a comfortable silence overlaid with tired breaths and lagged footsteps on the sidewalk to the Onsen. The sunset makes the air dusty with light that has Hasetsu look like an aged photograph, golden around the edges and scattered in a way similar to nostalgia. As they come to the bridge a thought enters Viktor’s head that he hasn’t really considered until now. Through the time he has lived here, Viktor had become so occupied with skating and Yuuri that he has never taken the time to see where he was. Hasetsu had so much character and history that he hasn’t even seen yet, the castle on the hill is about as far as he’s come to truly experiencing his stay here.

Viktor thinks this over in his head, and flips it over a few times, scolding himself for not taking advantage of sight-seeing when he first came to Japan where his time was freer. They still have to prepare for the Japanese championships which doesn’t necessarily leave many days for walking the town, but one day wouldn’t hurt too much.

“Yuuri,” Viktor gets the attention of the man walking beside him. “Tomorrow let’s take a day off training to go do something fun, you can pick.” Yuuri does a double take and glances at Viktor as if he just proposed to quit skating altogether and join him to raise lamas in Peru.

“Viktor, do you really think we have time to take off? I mean, the championships aren’t that far away.”

He understands Yuuri’s concern. If he doesn’t place on the podium for all of the lineups then their goal for reaching the Grand Prix will be delayed, and Yuuri doesn’t have too many years of skating left, Viktor himself doesn’t either.

“I am completely confident in your abilities for your routine, Yuuri,” he explains as they make their way off the bridge. “You should be as well, the effort you put into your skating has surpassed my expectations and there’s no doubt in my mind that you’ll make it to the Prix. Trust me, you’ve earned a break.”

He smiles at the blush coating Yuuris cheeks as he turns away from the praise. He always gets flustered when Viktor congratulates him on perfecting a landing or when he explains how proud he is, because Viktor truly is proud of Yuuri’s drive and honored to have him as a student. He wants to show him that in as many ways possible. Yuuri stares out at the ocean to their left in thought before sighing and flashing Viktor a smile that’s contagious. “Alright then, what do you want to do tomorrow?” Yuuri asks.

“Oh no no,” Viktor shakes his head on each word. “This is your day off more than mine, you get to decide what we do. Plus, I don’t really know the area all too well, so you’ll have to be my eyes on where we go.”

“Hmm,” Yuuri fiddles with the strap of his workout bag mindlessly. “Well, we could always go shopping at market close to the Inn,” he proposes. “They have lots of little booths there with fun things to buy, and we could bring back some groceries for dinner if you’d like?” Viktor gets visibly excited at that and lets out a little gasp of delight.

“Oh Yuuri! I could make you the summer borsht recipe I used to eat back in St. Petersburg!” Yuuri grins back at Viktor’s zeal and nods his head in agreement. “I’d really like that, Viktor, and I think my mother would appreciate not having to cook for a night.” They walked the rest of the way bathing in sunlight and anticipation for tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, I have quite an amount of plot planned for the next few chapters and I do have an idea of where this is to go even if my writing is scattered :P Also, thank you all who read this very much for keeping with the story! If you have any commentary please share, your support helps me to put more effort into my writing! Thanks <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah....sorry about not updating for such a long time, school has been really kicking my ass as finals are here and I'm preparing early for my CAS project. Don't think I've given up on this fic yet, though! I have plans for this, but thank y'all very much for reading this and don't be afraid to send me a message or comment!

Viktor looks like a kid in a candy store.

That’s what Yuuri thinks he resembles the most when his eyes would light up near street vendors calling out prices for overly-expensive goods that Viktor would become completely enamored with the moment he saw them. Little figurines of the Hasetsu Ice Castle, good luck charms in the shape of koi fish, geta shoes that are completely impractical for use outside of festivals, but ones that Viktor almost spent 22,000 yen on before Yuuri pried him from the stall, earning a malicious glare from the salesman.

That was nothing compared to the numerous “wrist wrappers”, his mother always called them, that would tie bracelets or charms around your wrist then try to get you to buy them simply because you already had it on you, so why not? Both he and Viktor are familiar with them and keep their hands close to themselves when passing by certain foot vendors. Viktor is acting like this is his first time in a market with the amount of sheer amazement he’s giving off as he pulls Yuuri along the stone walkways from booth to booth, studying each product carefully before moving onto the next.

Scents of roasting meat and pastries weave through the crowds like ribbons that catch on clothing, stalls, the very breeze itself, with frayed edges grasping at everything. There are so many vendors with spices and sweets that once Yuuri picks out the right smell of one, he immediately catches onto another which urges him further through the streams of people with Viktor at his side. Banners hang in the air next to each seller and booth, shouting with its script new deals and better pricing than the merchant down the way. Yuuri enjoys the familiarity of it. Everything, that is. It is so distinctively _Hasetsu_ here, the roaming people, the street food, sunlight bouncing on the pavement then ricocheting off the buildings. It feels authentic in the way that you can visit a hundred markets, but still recognize a specific one by the feeling of the air alone. Of course, when he was younger he didn’t think the same way when he was sent on shopping trips by his parents, he always thought there were way too many people, always _too_ _crowded_.

He has to admit that having Viktor here with him to do the shopping makes the chore he’s done a hundred times over much more enjoyable. The closeness of people bustling around while buying and selling always gave Yuuri an uneasy feeling of claustrophobia when he would go by himself to get groceries for his mother or flowers for the onsen that they’d put by the front desk.  He didn’t have the same feeling with Viktor being with him, although it’s the exact same location and circumstances. The uncomfortableness isn’t subsiding completely but it has lessened considerably, something he’s very grateful for. The voices of the people around him can still grow too loud at points, but they won’t be out for very long today. Even if something does happen, the street gets too overwhelming, Viktor is there as his support and guide if it comes down to it.

Yuuri want to enjoy this, though. He wants to have a good time on his day off and not bother to spare a thought or nerve to stress. Right now, was for him and Viktor to do some shopping, make some dinner, and not bother with the Championships coming up; that can be saved for tomorrow. He won’t have moments like this for too long.

“Yuuri!” Viktor’s voice rings across the open-air hall and pulls at his attention. Before he can turn his head to look, Yuuri feels a hand wrap around his arm that guides him to a large table facing the street littered with shoppers and a street performers. They bumped shoulders with a few people as Viktor pulls him along with Yuuri muttering quick apologies behind him before they finally stop along a line of stalls. This was the first flower booth they’d come too; now that the weather was much warmer they were scattered everywhere farther into the market. There is every flower variety and plant imaginable sorted and drawn into bouquets ranging from a couple roses to full arrangements of hydrangeas that were roughly the size of a small child. Stands are stacked around the table to pack more bouquets onto, but that also manages to create a near fortress of velvet colors with only a tiny opening in the front where an elderly woman sits, weaving together more flowers and taking orders from the people passing by. Yuuri has met her before, she’s kept her nails painted yellow since he was six and looks at least 97, which she might actually be if Yuuri knows anything about the age of the elderly around Hasetsu.

Viktor carries him by hand to the side of the stand and lets his arm go to grab at one of the smaller bouquets, probably only ten flowers at the most. Blinding crimson peonies are the first thing to jump out in at him, similar to the color of red wine that’s dusty and reflecting on top of itself. Smaller gardenias contrast their milky whiteness to the wine in the bouquet and make themselves look like snowflakes on red wool, an odd thing to imagine in the middle of summer. 

“Yuuri,” Viktor’s mouth forms itself into his signature heart shape as he grabs the flowers off the rack. “I have to buy these! Don’t you think your mom would love to have these to look at during the day?” Yuuri stares at the arrangement and knows that his mom _would_ love to have these around, peonies are her favorite, second only to gardenias. Yuuri smiles at the thought Viktor put in and leans in to take in the flowers’ scent, his nose grazing the peony petals.

 “I think they look beautiful, Viktor,” he agrees, pulling back. Yuuri brushes the tips of his fingers against the cream of the petals and grins at the warming feeling, dusting itself along his skin. When he looks up Viktor’s eyes watch him closely under the frame of his lashes and Yuuri can feel heat rush to his face from the fondness found there.  Viktor reaches his hand out and cups Yuuri’s cheek, swiping his thumb across the ball of his nose before pulling back, his finger dotted with bright yellow pollen.

 “I think so too,” he breathes out softly.

Yuuri can feel his heart skip as his eyes widen in surprise. “Plus…” Viktor walks around to the middle of the booth and sets the flowers on the table in front of the old woman before getting his wallet out. “These remind me of you somehow, I think mama Katsuki will feel the same.”

Yuuri figures that he probably looks as red as the peonies with the flush he can feel rush to his face. Even though Viktor compliments him and pushes his boundaries insistently with touching and holding like no one else does, Yuuri still finds himself blushing at even the slightest admiration given to him. Not to mention the warmth of Viktor’s hand holding his cheek and how it felt like fire, fueling smoke into the pit of his stomach. Or when they first met and he grabbed Yuuri’s chin while moving things into his room, or the lip incident during their first day on the ice, Viktor is pretty fond of touching him. Sometimes Yuuri tries to kid himself and blame his embarrassment on Viktor simply being more forward with him than other people, but he knows that’s not the real reason. Viktor just matters differently to him than his family or Phichit or Celestino. Viktor is something separate all together and although he can’t really put the feeling into words, Yuuri knows it’s something important that he’s been missing for a long time.

Viktor pays for the flowers in broken Japanese and they make their way back down the hall for the food vendors farther along. His mom gave him a large list of groceries she needs for the week after Yuuri told her that he and Viktor would be taking the day off to shop and make dinner later on, which she was ecstatic at hearing, meaning that she wouldn’t have to worry about cooking. He just hopes that they’ll be able to find everything as well as whatever Viktor needs to make his soup. Viktor said it was called _borscht_ and that it was fairly popular in in Russia and Ukraine, although Yuuri has no idea what it, nonetheless what it _tastes_ like.

“So, Viktor…” Yuuri sees the vegetable stand not far off, cluttered with people, and grabs Viktor’s sleeve to pull him along. “What exactly _is_ borscht anyways?”

A spark lights in Viktor eyes that spreads across his face, showing excitement in all of his features. “It’s a stew made with beets that you can serve with bread or cream, cold or hot, that I would eat often as a kid.” They arrive at the stand and Viktor immediately starts to choose vegetables for the seller to start packing. Onion, potatoes, carrots, a cabbage, deep violet beets toward the back of the baskets.

Yuuri stares on off to the side, watching intently as Viktor’s eyes scan the rows of fruit and gourds stacked upon each other in wooden boxes. The flowers in his hand pale in comparison to the pure light Viktor gives off with just his own self. He’s just so… _stunning_. And as Yuuri waits in the dense market air, waiting for Viktor to buy ingredients to make a dinner for him and his family later on, he almost thinks this could be some sort of dream that he’ll abandon when his alarm goes off in the morning. It’s _real_ though, which is the most incredible part of all of this. The fact that Viktor is here with him in Japan, living and training with him, _shopping_ with him. Yuuri can’t help but feel that this is all domestic, wonderfully, surprisingly, domestic.

And he never wants that feeling to end.

That’s a dangerous thought, though, and he knows it. He doesn’t want it to be. He wants to keep Viktor close to him, as selfish as it may be, even if they both belong to other people, his who he hasn’t even met yet. Soulmates can be platonic, so he shouldn’t feel to guilty about what he wants from Viktor, but there’s still a nagging feeling in the pit of his stomach that screams _this is wrong, he’s not yours to have_! Yuuri will have to let him go eventually, but until then, by God he’s going to hold onto him tight.

“Yuuri, help! What is he saying?” Yuuri blinks out of his thoughts and glances up at Viktor and the seller staring at him. He nearly forgot that Viktor only has a basic understanding of Japanese considering he hasn’t lived here too long. Yuuri is honestly surprised he’s gone the whole day speaking with vendors without asking for help. He walks over to stand next to Viktor and asks the man to repeat himself.

“He wants to know whether you want the food packed in boxes or a bag,” Yuuri tells Viktor after listening. “Oh,” Viktor draws out, blush shading his cheeks. “Bag, please.”

Yuuri repeats it to the vendor in Japanese and watches as their stuff is quickly packed away in a thick paper bag. Yuuri takes it and quickly pays before Viktor can protest, ushering him away from the stand and through the crowds. “Nope, not today,” he says, and pulls at Viktor’s sleeve. “If you’re making dinner and giving me a day off then I might as well buy the ingredients for you.” Viktor puckers his lips into a soft pout and steps up to walk along Yuuri’s side now.

“Alright, but you better bet that I’ll make you the best borscht you’ll ever taste!” They step into sync, moving with the crowd like a stream, natural and effortless. Yuuri adjusts the bag in his arms, conscious of the weight the potatoes and beets he’s carrying. “What does it taste like?” he asks. Viktor pauses a moment to think.

“Well, I suppose it comes a few different ways,” he explains. “Most often it’s tastes like roasted beets as the base flavor, with onion, broth, dill, sour cream, things like that to make it stronger.” They turn around a corner to head back to the Inn, the sun blazing its rays behind them. “My mom always made mine with lots of honey, though. To make the beets seem sweeter than they really were.” Viktor smiles faintly at the mention of his parent and Yuuri’s chest clenches at the sheer sincerity there, folded in the curve of his lips.

Yuuri breathes in, trying to gain a bit of golden courage from the fading summer light. “What is your mother like, Viktor?” He blurts it out almost like the words would disappear off his tongue if he didn’t get them out. The other man chuckles to himself at Yuuri’s obvious nervousness at such a simple question.

“My mother is a saint, first off,” he starts with honey dripping off his words, drenched in devotion. “She was the one who was very supportive of my skating career growing up and originally brought me into it in the first place. She would take me to a rink in St. Petersburg on weekends once it got cold enough and taught me to fall in love with the sport.” Yuuri notices Viktor start to trace patterns with his fingers on the edges of the peony leaves scattered in the bouquet wrappings. A soft routine in shades of green. “After my first switch at ten-years-old, I threw myself into skating, so, I was entered into lessons under Yakov and trained with my mother in ballet when the lessons weren’t enough. When I grew older and skating kept me busier, I stopped ballet with her and saved those lessons only for special days.”

“Your mom taught ballet?” The second question comes with more ease as Yuuri grows more confident in Viktor opening up to his curiosity.

“Yes, for a short time as a private instructor. She grew up in Savioe, France where she studied ballet before meeting my father and settling down with him in Russia to have me.” He gestures to himself with enough pride to make it seem like he’s royalty. “That’s why,” he continues, “when I met you, I was so completely mesmerized by your skating. Your movements on the ice showed the same love my mother put into her dance, a love that takes hold of whoever’s watching, a thing that tucks itself deeply into your chest.”

Viktor turns his head and Yuuri is taken aback by the raw emotion placed on his features, something unfamiliarly shown to him. Yuuri has felt what Viktor looks like right now, but has never been on the receiving end of it, has never felt the burning of complete _adoration_. The electricity in Viktor’s eyes, his mouth, his touch that asks _let me in, let me see what you can be_ … Yuuri doesn’t know how to respond to the fire, the intense heat of having a person utterly enthralled by him, at least if what he’s seeing is correct, Viktor is. This is a dangerous path he’s heading down, but for just a moment, Yuuri can’t find the strength within himself to care very much.

“What is your soulmate like?” Yuuri turns his head away once he says it and stares at the concrete passing beneath his feet, blush spread across his cheeks. “If you don’t mind me asking that is,” he adds.

Viktor looks caught off guard at the outburst and Yuuri is worried that the question was too personal, even for an open book like Viktor.  But there’s no going back now. “Well, I don’t know too much about them to be honest,” he begins. Yuuri lets out a sigh of relief. “We’ve only switched a few times and each one was fairly short, so there’s not much to go off. But, I’d like to meet them one day if I’m lucky enough. See what they’re like.” There’s something heavy in his tone, saturating his words until they’re sinking in his voice. It’s longing, he realizes. Viktor is reaching out for something he can’t have yet and Yuuri can see how much it hurts him. He shouldn’t have asked anything.

“How about you, Yuuri?” Viktor dodges the rest of his question but Yuuri is grateful for this, he doesn’t want him to answer what he isn’t comfortable with. Although, having the same question directed at himself isn’t what he was expecting. “What’s your opinion on soulmates? Not your own but the topic in general?” Viktor asks, eagerness for a reply in his voice. Yuuri thinks for a moment. He’s never been asked this before and doesn’t really know how to answer. What _does_ he think of soulmates?

“I, err…” Yuuri takes in a deep breath and stills himself. _Just give an honest answer_ , he thinks. _You have nothing to lose_. “I think that soulmates aren’t as great as everyone makes them out to be.” Viktor gives him a surprised look and Yuuri realizes how odd he most sound at basically bashing what some people spend their lives looking for.

“I mean, I’ve lived my whole life without my soulmate and I’ve been perfectly fine. I have Phichit and my family and skating and…” he hesitates. “…and you.” Yuuri glances over and sees a shade of pink start to paint itself over Viktor’s cheeks before he quickly stares back ahead of himself. “Of course, it might be nice to meet someone who is made for you, but the universe can’t control who you fall in love with or what kind of love. Some people never meet their soulmates and their lives are great. They marry another person, have kids, live happily without having ever met who they were ‘destined to be with’.” Yuuri takes one hand away from the bag he’s carrying to show the use of air quotes he’s trying to put across. “I think that you should love who you want,” he goes on, “and not worry about who the universe thinks you’re supposed to be with. To me soulmates are an option you _can_ take, but don’t _have_ to.”

The roof of the onsen comes into view by now and Yuuri does a double-take at how long they’ve been walking, it only feels like moments to him. Viktor is quiet and scrunches his eyebrows together in thought, a look similar to what he wears when trying new choreography or trying to remember an English word for something on the tip of his tongue. He hums softly to show that he understands and is considering what Yuuri said. _Maybe I went too far_? Yuuri wonders, felling like a stone dropped into the bottom of his stomach. _What if he disagrees and actually thinks soulmates are really important? Or if it’s more of a cultural thing to find your soulmate in Russia and I wasn’t being considerate? Oh god, I’ve messed up._

“I think you’re right, Yuuri. Who we love shouldn’t be decided for us and it shouldn’t be a concrete matter either.” Yuuri releases a sigh of relief and lets the tension sag out of his shoulders. At least Viktor is on the same page as him. _Maybe_ … Yuuri grips the paper bag tighter, the rough texture anchoring him down. _Maybe_ … he allows himself to think, to wonder, something he’s found to be quite a risky pastime. _Maybe I actually might have a chance_.

* * *

 

Yuuri feels tears slipping out of the corners of his eyes and roll softly down the side of his cheeks, staining wet streaks on his skin that feel sticky when he wipes at them. They won’t stop coming, though, and Yuuri doesn’t make an attempt to, he realizes that any swipe of his hand would be unavailing and only more would come. He hasn’t cried in a very long time so it’s actually nice to let the tears flow freely, ushered out by his eyelids when they catch on his lashes. It’s painful, stinging and aching and Yuuri knows that he probably looks like a red-patched mess right now, the white of his eyes tinted with pink. He sniffs at the stuffiness clogging his nose that makes it hard to breathe, and lets out a heavy breath through his mouth. If only Viktor didn’t need so much onion.

The vibrations of the kitchen knife hitting the cutting board dance up through his fingertips wrapped around the hilt of the blade and create a rhythm for his chopping. 1,2,3,1,2,3, like a waltz but with vegetables and his eyes burning like hell.

“Viktor,” He calls over his shoulder to the Russian man sautéing sliced carrots over the stovetop, humming a melody that Yuuri has never heard before since he’s almost positive it’s Russian. “How many should I chop again?” He scoops the cut onion to one side of the cutting board with the blade of his knife, regretting ever taking chopping duty over the actual cooking when Viktor offered him a choice; he thought chopping would be easier, he thought wrong.

“We only need about a cup and a half so that should be good.” Viktor grabs the board off the counter and slides the chopped onion into the sauté pan with the edge of his hand, setting the board back down and turning up the burner. The air grows thick with crackling vegetables and an overwhelming scent of onion. The kitchen is blurry from the tears still pooling in Yuuri’s eyes that leave light and colors stretching across his vision, he can’t seem to stop crying yet, though. God, he probably looks like a complete disaster. Yuuri uses his hands to guide himself to the sink and flips on the cold water to wash off the onion juice from his fingers, not wanting to accidentally touch his eyes with anything on them.

The moment they both got home, Yuuri and Viktor ushered Hiroko out of the kitchen so they could start dinner, ignoring her protests and offerings to help them. Yuuri told her to go relax in the onsen while they worked and while Mari was tending to the couple of customers that were left, which wouldn’t be very difficult. Yuuri knows that his mother needs some time to herself to not worry about the family or inn or any other situation that she deals with daily; right now, all she needs to focus on is herself. Yuuri dries his hands on one of the kitchen rags hanging over the sink faucet, making sure to scrub away any excess onion juice between his fingers before setting the rag back down and removing his glasses. He wipes any water off the rims and lenses with the hem of his shirt and swipes at his cheeks with the back of his hand to clear away any stray tears left there.

“You really can’t handle onions, can you?”

Yuuri hears a chuckle to his left and turns his head toward Viktor, still looking hazy without his glasses on and the water in his eyes. “Oh, like you can do any better. Everyone cries when cutting onions,” he snaps back playfully, sticking his tongue out at him. Ever since their talk earlier, Yuuri has been blessed with just a small bit of confidence added to how he interacts with the Russian man, a comforting new level of intimacy between them. Viktor reaches out and grabs a tear off of Yuuri’s cheek with the pad of his thumb, then another on the other side. “ _I_ don’t.” Yuuri tilts his head mockingly and dries his eyes with the collar of his t-shirt. “I doubt that, Viktor,” he smirks. “No one is immune to onion juice, no matter how tough they think they are.”

Viktor mocks offense, placing a hand over his heart, while he goes back to the stovetop. “Yuuri, I’m hurt you don’t believe me, but alas, you are mistaken. I am an exception to the onion rule from years of cutting them for this exact recipe.” He gestures with his hand to the sauté pan and soup pot on the stove with an air of confidence around him. “I have built a tolerance that prevents me from sheading a single tear. Next time we make this I’ll prove it to you.” He returns to cooking the onions in the pan mixed with carrots, oil, some sugar, and more spices than Yuuri is familiar with that Viktor had left over from previous meals where he’s cooked.

The words “next time” catch in Yuuri’s ear and cause a small smile to spread over his lips. _Next time_. The simple fact that a _next time_ would exist grips at him chest and burrows its warmth deep under his flesh. Viktor is here, now, cooking him dinner and coaching him daily, together. This isn’t a dream, this isn’t one of Yuuri’s childhood fantasies he’d wonder over in class or wake up to with a fleeting memory of. Not this time. This time his reality is finally better than his daydreams, at least for the most part.

Yuuri reaches for the paper bag next to Viktor for the bright violet beets which they have left to start on, and carries them over to the sink for washing, removing the dirt from the skin with his fingers. His family rarely ever made any sort of food with beets in them. In fact, Yuuri isn’t sure whether he’s ever cooked with beets before or not. He’s not the biggest fan of root vegetables, so probably not if he had to guess. Once the beets are dried, Yuuri begins peeling the outer layer with the blade of his paring knife, creating a long, single ringlet of the skin, exposing the deep red flesh underneath. Behind him, Yuuri can hear Viktor chopping next to the stovetop, most likely the cabbage or potatoes for later on in the recipe, and just below the thrumming of the cutting board, a low hum in his voice. The sound moves like steam from the soup pot and makes the air warmer with contentment, a hominess that Yuuri hasn’t felt before, not from himself nor from Viktor. It feels right.

He breathes in quietly, just listening to the shift in Viktor’s voice as he ranges the pitch from high to low then back up again. He’s so focused that he almost misses exactly what song it is. Yuuri can barely make out the echo of violin in Viktor’s tone at the notes and measures of his Eros routine waft throughout the kitchen, hanging onto both of their voices now that he’s decided to join in. His hips start to move on their own accord and soon he’s mapping out his skating routine in his head while keeping his feet planted firmly on the ground, mimicking the dance with minimal movements.

When they finish humming Eros, the next song immediately switches to Agape, and by the time they’re done with Yurio’s signature tune, the beets are completely peeled and ready for the boiling soup pot. He sets them in the water and turns the burner up higher, then rests the lid off on the edge of the pot like Viktor told him to earlier for the steam to escape. Viktor goes back to humming on his own, a song that Yuuri is unfamiliar with but enjoys listening to anyways through the softness of his voice. He rinses off the cutting board under the sink faucet and starts to scrub the beet juice off his hands, and scrubs…and scrubs… and…

“Viktor?”

Yuuri hears Viktor’s chopping stop. “Yes, Yuuri?” The Japanese man turns around with his hands splayed out in front of him and a red tinge on his cheeks from minor embarrassment. “Am I doing something wrong,” Yuuri asks, slight concern laces in his tone. He watches as Viktor turns to face his direction, the cabbage on the board behind him completely chopped and finished for the pot and a delicate eyebrow raised at Yuuri’s question. Viktor’s eyes scan his face quickly then finally settle on the deep red stains coating Yuuris fingers and palms of his hands, a look of understanding rising to his face. A deep laugh echoes along the kitchen and Yuuri’s embarrassment grows with it as Viktor seems not to concerned with crimson on his hands that wouldn’t wash off.

“Oops,” Viktor says, hand covering his mouth but failing to hide his obvious smile. “Have you never cooked with beets before? They’ll stain your skin red from the juice.” Yuuri sighs and stares down at his palms. “You forgot to mention that,” he replies.

“Sorry.” Viktor sets down his knife on the chopping board and walks the short distance across the kitchen, taking Yuuri’s hands and turning them around so he can see all sides. His skin is cold. “Baking soda gets out stains, we can pick some up tomorrow.” Viktor rubs his thumbs along the flat of Yuuri’s palms, staring at the red of his fingers like they can tell him stories.

“When I was younger...” Yuuri looks up and watches Viktor’s eyes on his skin, starting to feel warm from their attentiveness. “…back in Russia, for a year I would dye my hands in the winter with beets so they’d look like red mittens, so if I forgot mine at home, I’d still have a pair with me.” His fingers start to trace patterns. “It was pretty silly now that I think about it, but it did make me very happy when I didn’t have my mittens.” Yuuri relaxes into his touch and sighs, loving the feeling of being held, if only by his hands.

“I don’t think it sounds silly at all,” he nearly whispers between them. “I used to paint my nails with Mari when I was a kid as her guinea pig, and also because it was fun.” Viktor’s face lights up and grabs onto Yuuri harder. “Yuuri, I used to do that too! My mom and I would match before a competition.” He gasps as the look of a sudden idea crosses over his face, making him look brighter. “We should paint our nails tonight! Do you still have any polish?” Yuuri’s taken aback. “Yeah in the hall closet,” he replies.

“Perfect! You’ll do it with me, won’t you?”

Yuuri glances once again at their entangled hands and smiles up at Viktor. “Of course, as long as I get to paint yours.” Viktor nods readily and starts to spout off about the different colors and patterns he’d done for his competitions while heading back to his cutting board, taking time to describe how each went with his themes. Yuuri listened quietly, going back to chopping and cooking, the stains on his hands now looking a much brighter color.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All y'alls comments literally make my day and give me so much motivation! Please message me if you have anything to say, whether criticism or praise, I'll take it! And once summer comes I'll have much more time on my hands to go toward writing, so prepare yourselves :D


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright! finally a new chapter thank god. Ive been super busy lately with a new job and family visiting but now ill have more time for writing this fic and progressing it :0 thanks for all the kudos and comments yall leave! it brightens my day to see that you all enjoy the fic so far and I love reading anything you have to comment about. hope you nejoy the chapter, a new one will be out soon :p

The borscht was by far the best Viktor’s ever made, even though he dealt without his St. Petersburg ingredients and they hadn’t had enough honey to make it meet his standard of sweetness, which was questionably high. Hiroko, Toshiya, and Mari complimented him to no end as they ate, praising his culinary skills and laughing at Yuuri’s rouged hands. Viktor is glad to give them a relaxing meal after everything they’ve done to be hospitable to him, and he enjoyed it to no end. It had been something new. With Yuuri helping him make the dish, he had taken something familiar from his life and added a new kind of importance that changed the way Viktor’s familiarity tasted, not just that, but the way his own familiarity felt. It’s tinged in the marrow of his bones, right through the flesh; he has altered himself in a way that he could have never begun to conceive on his own. The Hasetsu air is sweeter than Viktor could ever begin to describe and acts like a cloud of déjà-vous, like he had been there before in a past life and can feel the remains of his memories weaved in the cobblestones. Everything has even begun to sound better since he had arrived here. Muffled Japanese from the television in the onsen lobby layered over kitchen pans sizzling in the back with Mari cooking mimics the melodies he’d skate to in his performances from the rhythm settled deep into the heart of the building.

And the morning light is so much brighter, _softer_ , than he has known before. Through the curtains of his bedroom, each morning he’d be greeted with silk yards of sunlight patched with dust and sewn with lace-light, falling on the frame of his bed and the strands of his hair. His senses have been heightened, adrenalized, to the point where he has realized that before now, his life alone, was nothing but a fog that only steeped him lower into himself over time. It wasn’t healthy, and it wasn’t living, it was existing without reason.

He would never go back, never let himself fall over again into what he used to think was just living. Viktor wouldn’t let himself because now he has a reason for everything, for _being_. And that reason is currently riffling through a hall closet for a bucket of old nail polish.

“Mari used to keep it here on the top shelf, so let’s see,” Yuuri murmurs over his shoulder. The closet is filled with spare towels, sheets, random books near the bottom that Viktor can’t read the titles of besides for the random hiragana characters scattered across the covers. He was never very good at Japanese when he attempted to learn it as a child; it was much too different from Russian. Yuuri stretches up on the pads of his feet to reach a small wicker basket toward the back of the closet and pulls it away from the shelf, careful not to knock any of the polish out by accident. Viktor can feel excitement bubble up through his chest, completely thrilled to have his nails painted for him after so long, getting them done by Yuuri is also a major achievement. Yuuri turns around, basket in hand, and Viktor watches as he looks over the tiny bottles, a smile pressing at the corners of his mouth that’s contagious.

They step down to Yuuri’s room at the end of the hallway quietly and Viktor shuts the door behind them. He watches as Yuuri sits down cross-legged onto his bed near the headboard and sets the polish basket in front of him, riffling through the glass bottles and setting some aside on the comforter. There’s a feeling again, a specific heat filling his lungs and burning his throat that he can’t seem to get enough of. It’s painful, only slightly, and yet it’s satisfying, a sugar-coated ache right in the middle of himself that spikes and lessens but never leaves. And looking at Yuuri, criss-crossed in his pajamas, choosing colors to paint his nails, sets a fire in Viktor’s stomach that clouds his eyesight with smoke so that the Japanese man is the only thing he can see. It’s curious, and exhilarating, and he never wants it to end.

“Viktor?”

Yuuri stares at him questioningly and Viktor realizes that he’s still standing by the door, staring off into space. He breaks himself from his thoughts and steps toward the bed, moving to sit cross-legged like Yuuri and snuggling into the blankets piled at the foot of the bed.

“So, what colors are we thinking about?” he asks, studying the bottles and reaching in to hold a dark blue with glitter swimming throughout it. Yuuri digs his hand into the basket and pulls out various shades of blue that are much lighter than the one Viktor’s holding, and sets them off to the side. He studies the set before picking up a lighter shade mixed with grey that reminds Viktor of the sky in December, brighter than snow on the earth. Yuuri shakes the bottle. “I was thinking of this one,” he twists the lid off to check if it’s old, “blue’s one of my favorite colors.”

“I can tell.” Viktor gestures to Yuuri’s dark blue pajama pants and lighter shirt with little paw prints dotted over the fabric in a pattern. Yuuri blushes as he places the rest of the bottles back into the basket, leaving out the blue he picked. Viktor immediately chooses a deep red sitting on the top of the pile, something similar to blackberry juice, or wine, then sets the basket near the wall to be out of the way. He grabs the polish bottle and hands it to Yuuri expectantly.

“You wanted to paint mine, right?”

Yuuri smirks and takes the bottle from his hand, shaking it again to move to color around beneath the glass. “Absolutely,” he says, removing the cap. Viktor holds out his right hand for Yuuri to take and leans into the sharpness of cold fingers on his own. The polish feels heavy as Yuuri brushes it on layer at a time, eyes never leaving the details of his work. It’s endearing how careful he’s being, Viktor thinks to himself. He watches Yuuri move his hand this way and that to do a proper job, concentration spent on his features. Viktor lets the heat smolder in his chest, calming the flames, and simply sits in content silence to hear the whispers of Yuuri’s breathing and feels the brush of skin on his own.

 

 

Yuuri’s done this enough times to not screw up. Mari always got on his case when he would get paint all over her skin instead of cleanly on her nails, so he taught himself to become a pretty good nail painter under her guidance. It’s a familiar feeling, a muscle memory that takes over as he applies base layers on Viktor’s nails, bright red glistening in the lamplight across the room. Yuuri thinks of the color of Viktor’s track suit as he paints and gets lost in Viktor’s many explanations of skating performances as a child, all of which Yuuri has already memorized by heart. Viktor rambles on, obviously very enthusiastic about his early career and the amount of sparkly costumes he wouldn’t be able to fit in now, but some that Yuuri can fit into, thinking of his Eros display. This is a moment that Yuuri would have never expected to have happen to him. Sitting with Viktor Nikiforov in his bedroom painting nails like a couple of teenage girls at a sleepover, gossiping about boys and whatever else. This exact situation is nothing short of a childhood daydream Yuuri would conjure up in class or ponder over while running in the mornings. And now it’s real, he thinks. Now it’s right in front of him and makes nostalgia rise in his chest like smoke, warming his core from the inside out. It’s blissful.

“-and then I wore black for the winter Olympics a few years ago, but had red gloves so I couldn’t paint my nails, but the gloves _did_ look amazing,” Viktor chatters on in front of him. Yuri realizes he hasn’t paid much attention to what he’s been saying and hums in the back of his throat to let Viktor know he’s still listening. Both hands are done with their coats and Yuuri reaches in the basket to add on the clear top layer to make them shine.

“What about you, Yuuri?”

He doesn’t look up from his work but tilts his head in question. “What about me?” he asks. Yuuri sees Viktor tilt his head to copy him in the corners of his vision and smiles at being made fun of. “What skating costume has been your favorite?” He pretends to consider for a bit but already knows his answer.

“Eros,” he says unwavering.

“Oh?” Viktor sounds surprised but there’s a level of amusement, possibly pride playing on his voice that let’s Yuuri know his feelings on having his old costume be chosen as best. “I’m glad you enjoy it so much, you made into something I never could have, something extraordinary,” Viktor breathes softly. He leans forward as if he’s going to share a secret, although they’re the only ones in the room and whispering isn’t even necessary. “You gave that costume a life of its own with how beautiful you are in it, how amazing you are when you skate.”

Yuuri stops painting and looks up, a thick blush covering his cheeks. “The costume is beautiful already,” he sighs. “I didn’t do anyth-“

He stops. The breath in his lungs cuts short and his body refuses to move, eyes refuse to leave Viktor in front of him. Because for just a moment, just a shift of his senses, the weight of polish heavied his nails although he was the one painting. There was hair in his eyes, longer than he’d ever had it grown, and weights on his feet, pulling him down to the earth that his body wasn’t used to. And there was a boy, small and afraid, with tears in his eyes as he stood in front of a kitchen mirror and clutched at silver hair that wasn’t his. Pulling at locks with fingers clad in bright red polish that made his skin look like cream. He was absolutely terrified, and Yuuri watched as the boy in the mirror cried before the memory faded and left a clouded residue in his head, and a shiver up his spine. And then it all clicks, and Yuuri feels the weight of the world lift off his shoulders. Those slender hands are still there, nails painted red and reaching out for his touch and Yuuri holds them tight as he looks up. That boy from so many years ago hasn’t changed too much, which is why Yuuri feels like an idiot for not realizing before, but god he looks beautiful when he’s not crying.

Yuuri’s breath hitches in his throat.

And it’s Viktor, it’s _him_ , it’s always been him. Yuuri can’t really blame his own clogged up childhood memories for keeping him from making the connection sooner, but he’s irritated that it took this long for the glass of the universe to fall into place and mirror back to him the reality he’s been so blind to. He had seen it, the resemblance, but was so caught up in not wanting to be proved wrong, not wanting to be left broken, that he couldn’t accept how wildly forward the facts were. In the end, he needed a push. But there was something in the way, something that wouldn’t let Yuuri see what was right in front of him. As if he wasn’t supposed to know until this very moment, this precise stitch in an infinite reality, that Viktor, who he’s fallen so hopelessly in love with, has been his the whole time. It’s a bittersweet irony that the world seems to be so terribly fond of.

Viktor looks back at him, eyebrow raised in question at Yuuri’s sudden change in demeanor, and Yuuri is too stunned to even care about how odd he must be acting. Viktor is his soulmate! Yuuri can tell him, explain his memories and Viktor can finally know everything! But… Yuuri flashes back to their conversation earlier in the market, the agreement they both came to on what a soulmate really is, that it’s just a title. What if Viktor doesn’t feel the same for Yuuri, but will feel obligated to stay with him because of how they’re connected? He can’t put that pressure on Viktor, no matter how badly he wants to scream the truth. He’s been lucky enough to grow close to Viktor over the past few months, to cherish him as a person and not some predestined entitlement. Falling in love with Viktor has been slow, and aching, and _lonely_ , but it’s been worth it, and he’d go through it all again a hundred times over if it meant that he’d do it on his own. He fell in love without push or pull.

“Yuuri?”

And now he needs to do the same for his soulmate, give him time. He can’t tell Viktor, he decides, albeit reluctantly. Not until Viktor can love him without the weight of a soulmate title bearing down on the both of them, clouding whatever Viktor might really feel. Yuuri is fortunate to fall in love on his own, and waiting for Viktor to do the same, no matter how long it takes, is the least he can do. Patience has been, and will continue to be, his driving force, patience for Viktor. Yuuri breathes in and the air feels like cotton in his lungs as he tries not to cry, to stifle the pressure building behind his eyes. He can’t do this right now, not here.

“Sorry,” he mummers down at his hands, “I’m just not used to being called beautiful.” Yuuri realizes how weird he must look, suddenly getting worked up over a simple compliment, but he rolls with it anyways. He needs an excuse to cover the way he’s acting. He doesn’t look up as he puts the clear bottle away and gets out the blue one, but he can feel Viktor’s gaze heavy on him. Yuuri holds out the bottle for Viktor to take relaxes when he does, unscrewing the cap and starting on Yuuri’s outstretched hand.

“Then I guess I’ll have to get you used to it.” Yuuri finally looks up and basks in the warmth of Viktor’s smile, knowing only now why it’s always been so familiar, nostalgic. “Okay,” he replies, knowing very well that Viktor plans to keep his word, the thought sending a wingbeat through Yuuri’s heart. Viktor starts to paint, content with the silence between them as he details the color over Yuuri’s nails. Yuuri admires the way his hand moves, how careful he is with the brush and how gently he holds Yuuri’s in place, like holding a snowflake. _This is my soulmate_ , he thinks. _He’s been here the whole time_.

Viktor looks more vivid somehow, now that Yuuri can faintly remember glimpses of his first switch and the memories steep into reality. There was the kitchen, small but not cluttered save for pots on the back wall and the tiny dining table. He remembers how lived it all looked, it was domestic with light flooding in through the window, brightening the room, and food on the table. Yuuri always imagined that Viktor grew up in a fancy home with expensive furniture and giant rooms, but that apartment was small, and definitely wasn’t very new looking. His parents either weren’t as wealthy as Yuuri originally thought, or they were simply modest, a trait their son hasn’t taken after well considering Viktor has a marble bust sitting in the corner of his room. Yuuri stiffens as a thought passes through his head, something that’s been prickling under his skin for a while now.

“Viktor?”

“Hmm?”

“Did your parents support your skating? I’ve never really seen them before at your competitions.”

Yuuri knows that it’s a fairly personal question but curiosity isn’t very relenting in most matters, and especially not ones concerning Viktor. Since Viktor is his soulmate Yuuri feels like he need to know everything about him, _wants_ to know everything, and now he has the courage to do so. He only catches faint glimpses of memory of the man and woman who were there for his first switch in the tiny St. Petersburg apartment. He remembers soothing familiarity of Japanese and bright ocean-blue eyes that are nearly identical to Viktor’s when they light up in questioning. But that’s nearly it, the rest is elusive.

Viktor doesn’t seem offended by the question and simply smiles at Yuuri before continuing his work on the Japanese man’s nails. “My parents are the ones who brought me into skating in the first place,” he starts. “My father was a professional figure skater before he became an international judge for competitions, meaning he was gone fairly often for work and couldn’t be around as much as he wanted to for my own skating. He was very supportive, though, and was one of my biggest fans.” Yuuri can feel the affection laced in his words and thanks whatever higher power is up there that Viktor was able to grow up with that much love.

“And there was my mother,” he continues. “Like I told you earlier, she would bring me to the rink on weekends and teach me ballet when I had the time. She’s like my father, though, and is very busy with her own work. She teaches ballet in Russia and can only really take time off when I have a competition in St. Petersburg. But even if they can’t make it to my performances like they used to, they still call to wish me luck or congratulate me.”  Yuuri’s nails are finished by now and Viktor screws the bottle lid back on before placing it back in the basket.  They both sit, holding their hands out to dry the paint and drowning in each other’s company.

“What about your family, Yuuri?” Viktor asks. “Were they supportive?”

Yuuri sighs and fiddles with the fabric of his pajama pants, knowing that of course Viktor would ask about his own life; Viktor’s been prying at Yuuri to tell him anything about himself since the moment he moved into the onsen. No one has ever really been that interested in Yuuri enough to ask before, which is why it was such a shock to have his own idol be genially curious about him as a person. It’s an odd feeling to have someone treat you like you’re the world.

“My family was very happy when I started skating as a kid, it helped me to make friends and get out of the house. They saw that I had a passion for it but never really thought that I’d turn it into a career.” Yuuri could almost feel Viktor catching onto every word, as if the quiet between them was a desert and Yuuri’s own voice provided an oasis, a safeplace. “Mari and my parents don’t really understand skating very well, although they know it means a lot to me, but they still cheer me on and that’s all I could ever ask for. Even though it’s hard when your family can’t share an understanding for your passion in life.” Yuuri breathes in and plans out his next words carefully, riding on whatever shred of confidence he has in himself right now.

“But that’s changed now,” Yuuri lifts his head to watch Viktor’s eyes at what he’ll say next, knowing he wouldn’t want to miss a single moment of seeing his reaction. He can’t tell Viktor that they’re soulmates, but he can surely say everything else; something to explain how he feels without spilling the whole truth. A truth that Viktor will learn eventually.

 Ever since you’ve come to Hasetsu, Viktor, you’ve changed my life. Skating isn’t what it used to be, it’s better now, more freeing, like how I experienced it for the first time and it’s made me so much happier. I now have someone to struggle with through all this, someone who knows and shares the same thing that I love.” Yuuri watches as Viktor’s eyes grow with each sentence, every ounce of their attention focused on him and him alone, undivided.

“I no longer feel alone now that you’re here with me,” Yuuri close to whispers, feeling his chest clench. No matter what happens between them in the future Yuuri knows he needs to say everything now, just in case. “You’re a part of my family now, Viktor, there’s no other way I can describe it. You’ve shown me a love that I’ve never felt before and... I don’t really know how to put it into words… but whatever it is, it means you’re a part of my life that I never want to let leave, so please, never let me go.”

Viktor stays completely still, bearing no reaction and Yuuri almost believes that he’s broken him until a smile as soft as the moon forms across Viktor’s lips as he reaches forward and takes Yuuri’s hands, careful to not smudge their nails.

“Yuuri.”

It’s simply incredible how softly Viktor speaks when Yuuri feels like his world is going to collapse in underneath the weight of those eyes, god, those beautiful eyes that he’s become so smitten for. _And all this time,_ he thinks, _all this time Viktor’s been right there, a thousand miles away and right beside me simultaneously, like a memory of a memory_. Viktor reaches up to cup his cheek and Yuuri doesn’t lean away, not this time, he lets himself indulge in this moment, lets himself be selfish for only a little while. Just enough time to memorize the warmth of Viktor’s skin on his.

“Yuuri, you don’t even know how happy I am to hear you say that, how happy I am to be here with you.” Viktor rubs his thumb along the apple of Yuuri’s cheek and Yuuri can feel himself start to melt into the touch, the feeling of contact that people crave so desperately because it’s a reminder, a promise, that they aren’t alone and never will be. It’s a reminder to the things Yuuri often forgets, with Viktor as his memory.

“Coming here to coach you wasn’t on a whim, it was because I saw something in you that you fail to see yourself. That you have ability beyond everyone else to do impossible things, to surpass expectations.  And you _surprised_ me,” Viktor brings his other hand up to Yuuri’s face, holding him like a person should be held, like they’re the universe itself. “You surprised me when no one else could, not even myself. You being brought into my world changed it entirely and I never want to go back to the way I lived without you, the way I lived without something I wanted to protect. Becoming your coach has been the highlight of my career and meeting you has been the highlight of my life. I never want to lose these new emotions you’ve shown me to exist.”

Yuuri feels tears prickle et his eyes then run down his cheeks, his chest aching at each word from Viktor’s mouth. A feather-light touch brushes them away as quickly as they come but that only makes Yuuri cry more, the emotion inside of him finally bursting outward, and Viktor still stays close.

“Yuuri,” he breathes. “I never want to lose you. You’ve become my family just as much as I’ve become yours and it’s more than I could ever ask for, but I’m selfish you know and need just one more thing from you.” Yuuri nods his head at the expectant look on Viktor’s face, knowing he would agree to anything he’d ever need, anything he’d ever want.

“I need you to stay close to me and never let me go.”

That was the final blow to break Yuuri entirely, to shatter his walls and erase his barriers. Yuuri can’t even begin to comprehend how lucky he is to have Viktor in his world, not just that, but as his best friend and soulmate, someone who completes him like nothing else. Yuuri has a chance to show him that, to show Viktor exactly how much he matters and how much Yuuri’s willing to give for him. Body, mind, and spirit, he’d give it all to Viktor in the blink of an eye if he would allow it. Not yet, though. Yuuri needs to be sure that Viktor can feel the same as him, nothing pushing his feelings but Yuuri himself and the time they have together, however long that may be.

Viktor wipes at the tears painting Yuuri’s skin, catching each one with the pads of his thumbs and Yuuri feels naked under the raw affection in the way Viktor looks at him, only at him. Viktor expects an answer, and Yuuri’s known his response far before this moment, before he’s even met Viktor himself.

“Of course,” he whispers, voice cracking. “I promise.”

 

* * *

 

 

After their nails dried they both decide that sleep was best, considering they still have training the next morning; the Japanese Championships were fast approaching and Yuuri still isn’t where he wants to be in order to place. He just needs time, and skating will give him that. As long as he keeps winning, Viktor will continue coaching him, and after the Grand Prix… well, he’ll see how things turn out when the time comes. Until then he just needs to win, to keep Viktor with him.

_What about after the Grand Prix?_ Yuuri wonders. _What about when Viktor needs to go back to skating? You can’t keep him from the world forever, he belongs on the ice_.  

_He belongs with you._

His consciousness tells Yuuri to let Viktor go back to skating, the sport he fell in love with and built himself upon, but there’s an ache in Yuuri’s chest, a pit in his stomach, that if Viktor left it would crush him completely, send him spiraling downward.

_It’s not your decision._

Yuuri sighs and buries his face in his pillow, trying to block out the thoughts in his head. Whatever Viktor would choose in the end, Yuuri would be supportive, even if it meant losing everything. Loving someone isn’t fair but it’s worth it. As long as Viktor is there for him now, then Yuuri will do anything to be there for him later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> again, comments are super appreciated! seeing yalls enthusiasm for this fic really helps me to be motivated to write more :p


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I'm back from my unplanned hiatus, sorry about that. i swear im not abandoning this fic, i just got super busy with a new job and the new school year that just started up, finding time has been difficult. i have a plan for this fic though so dont think ive given up just yet on this story :p 
> 
> thanks for sticking around if youve been here since the begining, yall are troopers, also thanks for reading to the newcomers, welcome  
> i actually really liked writing this chapter so i hope yall enjoy it too, here ya go

 

If there’s one thing that Viktor’s sure of, it’s that Chris definitely knows how to make the ice his. He’s known Chris for some time now and is aware of the immeasurable amount of passion and… sensuality, that is applied to his skating performances, as well as the private shows he’s gifted to Viktor over the years, which were always interesting to say the least. But now, that passion is a major threat to the competition rankings, and therefore to Viktor himself as Yuuri’s coach. Viktor watches the television screen which displays all the skater’s routines live to the back rooms where other competitors wait. It’s supposed to allow the skaters a chance to watch any of their friends or competition, but it also serves as a strict confidence depressant.

The room lingers with a nervous air of pre-competition panic from other skaters and their coaches, ready for the final judgement that this day will bring for whomever will advance to the Grand Prix Final, and who will be left. The short program the day before went exceptionally well for Yuuri; perfect landings, sublime posture, graceful emotion, everything needed for an advancement to the Prix. Today is different, though. Seeing Yuuri this morning made a stone drop in Viktor’s stomach, to say he looked awful would be doing him a kindness. His hair was a disaster, there were deep bags under both eyes, and he walked like there were lead weights on his feet, not exactly the makings of a winning performer.

Even a nap didn’t help in the end like Viktor expected to. He always cherished the rest he allowed himself before competitions, but he supposes Yuuri just wasn’t able to find any sleep. The Japanese Championships went perfectly fine, more than that, with Yuuri pulling in a first-place title and an advancement to the Cup of China, which leads them one step closer to the Grand Prix. The Short Program yesterday also earned Yuuri first-place, but gave an immense amount of pressure along with it, enough to break Yuuri down and tearing his seams. Not only that, but the jump missed in the warm-up earlier knocked his confidence to an all-time low since Viktor’s been coaching him, and performance without confidence is as good as lost.

Viktor glances over to his student currently stretching against the wall, unable to sit still for long without pacing or fidgeting, so opting for pre-stretching to ease his mind. It’s not very effective from what Viktor can tell in the way that Yuuri is still tense and jumpy. Viktor presses a finger to his lips, thinking of a way to somehow boost his student’s confidence, or at least ease his fears. If only Yuuri could see his potential, his talent and ability on the ice, then maybe he wouldn’t be so nervous, but it’s like that part of him is blocked off from the rest and he simply doesn’t know it’s there. Viktor can see it, easily, and so can everyone else. Yuuri seems to have very low opinions of himself, which Viktor can’t understand in the slightest, that handicaps him from achieving his maximum. The only thing stopping Yuuri from doing his very best is himself, something that Viktor can’t control, only guide and support. How are you supposed to help someone whose greatest enemy is their own mind? Viktor feels helpless here, out of his element. He’s not Yuuri’s dopamine, or serotonin, or endorphins, he’s just Viktor, a hopeless fool that can’t help someone he loves no matter how much he wishes that he could and it breaks his heart.

He’s never felt this useless before.

Viktor shudders at the thought and pushes it away for another time, just not now. He hears a camera shutter and looks over his shoulder at the crowd of photographers and film crews come to harass the skaters, and now Yuuri in his disarrayed state. They’ll take whatever they can and run with it, anything to make another story for another deadline. Heat bubbles in Viktor’s chest, fiery with irritation as he grabs Yuuri from the wall and away from the prying lenses of the journalists and filmers. They don’t deserve Yuuri on their pages, not when they’re only exploiting his hardships.

“Yuuri, let’s go somewhere quieter,” Viktor announces loudly, and not without casting an eye-slit glance over his shoulder to the scattered reporters.

The Japanese man doesn’t respond, simply lets himself be hurried along down the hall to the back staircase that Viktor doesn’t really know where leads, just knows that it’s away from prying eyes. As they move down the stairs, the rusted echo of footsteps mingles with the fainting cheers from the crowds above. Chris’ performance causes quite a ruckus as Viktor feels vibrations from the rowdy audience sprint through the walls and into the floor through the soles of his shoes. His heart rate spikes and uncertainty floods his veins like a drug, a hard-hitting, dizzying drug that fogs Viktor’s stomach.

 _What if Yuuri’s nerves get the best of him? What if he set himself back so much that he can’t recover to the next round? What if he can’t land his jumps because of stress_?

Viktor’s grip on Yuuri’s shoulder tightens as the stairs lead them both down to the parking garage below the building. He can’t be afraid, if Yuuri sees him nervous then it’ll only get worse and Yuuri feels strained enough. Viktor opens the heavy metal door and guides Yuuri through, walking down a row of empty cars to further down the lot, praying that no noise will break through the walls. He can feel Yuuri shudder as another wave of cheers flit through the ceiling from the rink above, a pluck at fraying strings too close to breaking for Viktor’s liking.

“Viktor,” Yuuri nearly whispers, and his voice sounds like sand sifting through fingers, dusty and coarse. “What are the current standings? Did you hear the announcer? Do you know what he sa- “?

“Yuuri, calm down, let’s take some deep breaths, alright?”

 Viktor raises his hands to stop the other man’s racing and quickly tries to think of a way for a distraction.

“Yuuri, how about we go over your routine again, and take your mind off the scoreboard?” Viktor tries, and sighs with relief to see that Yuuri’s shoulders lose some of their tension, although he still fidgets nervously.

“Alright, that might be good,” he murmurs.

Yuuri slowly and shakily begins his performance, a one-man show in a silent parking garage with Viktor serving as the only witness to an unleaded display of power and faith. As Yuuri continues, his muscles relax and allows his face to fall again into what Viktor can only describe as blissful agony, fear of failure tinted with desire for success. An envious present for an everchanging future. _This_ is the Yuuri he wants to show the world, this beautiful creature that can sway crowds like the moon with the tide, enthralling audiences. If only Yuuri could move in front of a crowd like he moves in front of Viktor. If only their solitude could transfer to the outside, the spotlights and cameras that could broadcast Yuuri’s victory, his beauty.

Viktor sighs as he watches Yuuri move into his step sequence, shoes dancing against the smooth concrete and scraping sound through the still air around them. Another amazingly loud cheer collides with the sound of Yuuri’s steps before they die out and leave the audience’s whoops and hollers. A bitter taste enters Viktor’s mouth as he glares up at the ceiling. Their applause is a death sentence as well as their silence, and Viktor can already see Yuuri digging his own grave. Viktor turns to see Yuuri’s face horror-stricken staring up at the ceiling, earbuds in his hands that serve so little to drown out the noise above them. He can see Yuuri’s fingers tremble around the plastic buds and his shoulders raise in panic. It pulls at Viktor’s heart and he snaps, rushing over to Yuuri to cover his ears, to block out the mocking cheers of the crowd.

“No!” he barks. “Don’t listen!”

The earbuds clack to the floor as Yuuri stares wide-eyed at the sudden outburst, completely stiff in Viktor’s touch. Yuuri looks as if he’s being summoned to the firing squad with fear in his eyes and a nervous sweat across his brow. _Shouldn’t Yuuri be used to this?_ Viktor thinks. _It’s usually beginner skaters who are this nervous, so why is he so scared now? What’s different?_

“Viktor?”

_Maybe the stakes are too high this time around?_

“Viktor, we should head back. I’ll be up soon,” Yuuri mumbles and takes Viktor’s hands away from his face to start walking. This is the final stretch before performing and Yuuri can barely look Viktor in the eye, he won’t last in front of the crowd. The Grand Prix is so close to their reach, they can’t lose now, now with everything Yuuri’s worked for over the months, it can’t all go to waste. Viktor just needs to see Yuuri’s fiery determination brightening his eyes like his first Eros routine at Hasetsu on ice, when Viktor knew for certain that he would coach a man that would win the Grand Prix. Yuuri had high stakes then like he did now, so what’s the difference?

 _You_ , a voice in the back of Viktor’s mind slips in a hushed tone, making Viktor quiet in sudden realization.

If Yuuri lost Hasetsu on Ice then Viktor would have left back to Russia with Yuri, that was what was on the table. Yuuri was nervous then, too, but drove himself to practice and win, because the fear of losing Viktor outweighed any failure that could come. An idea comes to Viktor like a whirlwind. An idea only someone who was desperate and slightly sadistic could conjure up and actually go through with, good this he was both of those right now.

“Yuuri.”

_Skater’s hearts are as fragile as glass. If they’re so fragile…_

Viktor rakes a hand through his hair, and braces himself for the performance of his life.

 _Let’s try shattering his into pieces_.

“If you miss the podium…” he starts, the words on his lips tasting like gasoline with their disastrous potential. “…I’ll take responsibility by resigning as your coach.”

The air is stiff and quiet as if the world simply ceased to function for the briefest of moments where Viktor considered that maybe, possibly, this wasn’t the wisest course of action. He paws at the back of his neck in worry, anxious for a reaction, anything really, to show that Yuuri heard and understood him. The seconds tick by like an hour, and Viktor starts to plan an escape route in his head, something to explain his threat and somehow treat it as a joke he can play off, then hell breaks loose.

Yuuri’s tears roll like waves down blotchy cheeks and onto the toes of his shoes, staining the concrete over and over again as they drop. His face scrunches in a way that reminds Viktor of a child in a fit and he flinches. _This could have been thought over more_ , he thinks. Yuuris fists are balled tight at his sides and his breathing is as damp as his cheeks.

 _It shattered_.

Yuuri’s breath catches in his throat as his tears swell, clogging the silence with patched breathing. “Why would you say something like that?” he spits and Viktor’s stomach drops. “Like you’re trying to test me?”

There’s venom dripping off his words and Viktor realizes how miraculously he fucked up. This is not how things were supposed to go. Yuuri was supposed to find his drive and boost his score up the leaderboard to first place, Viktor would say it’s all a joke and that he would never leave him, then they’d order Chinese room service to celebrate and Yuuri would confess he’s madly in love with Viktor and they’d elope to France, it was the perfect plan! It was perfect in his head at least, but he didn’t even make it past step one without a meltdown on his hands. Time for plan B: comfort and apologies.

Viktor steps forward with his hands up in defense, worry stitched in his brow. “…Sorry, Yuuri, I wasn’t being serious-“

“I’m used to being blamed for my own failures, but this time I’m anxious because my mistakes will reflect on you, too! I’ve been wondering if you secretly want to quit!”

Viktor pauses a moment, surprised at the notion of Yuuri ever thinking that he’d just up and leave him… like he just proposed to do…shit.

“Of course, I don’t.”

“I know!”

Yuuri is beyond words by now, sobs wracking his body as he tries fruitlessly to get a decent breath in his lungs. Viktor is completely lost. He only silently watches on to the utter breakdown of the one person he truly loves and it snaps a little part of him inside to know that it was caused by his own incompetence and selfishness. He knows he needs to divert the situation fast or else Yuuri will be in worse shape than before and possibly risk not making place, which is not an option.

“I’m not good with people crying in front of me, I don’t know what to do.” Viktor reaches for the back of his neck and scratches at the nape nervously. What should he even do when Yuuri’s like this? How the hell are you supposed to make someone feel better when they’re sobbing their eyes out? Desperation seeps into Viktor’s skin like a damp coat as it weighs down his shoulders and somehow makes him feel more astray than before; never in a million years would he have thought that he could experience so much panic and heartache from simply seeing someone cry, yet here he is.

“Should I just kiss you or something?”

“No!”

Well that didn’t work.

“Just have more faith than I do that I’ll win! You don’t have to say anything, just stand by me!”

There’s an echo scattering through the parking lot that bounces off walls and seems to hit Viktor from all sides, shaking him to his core from the sheer force of the words. Yuuri wipes at his eyes harshly, smudging tears over his cheeks and the palms of his hands. He’s not sobbing anymore but hiccups every so often as he calls himself down from the outburst. Viktor has nothing to say and doesn’t even think he could speak if he did. He does have faith in Yuuri, more than he’ll ever know, and sees that Yuuri is capable of making himself into something Viktor could never possibly dream of being. Yuuri will surpass him one day, that is for certain. Viktor will lose his throne fairly and will gladly give it up in order to see Yuuri in his full potential, the potential to be the greatest skater alive.

Yuuri may not believe it himself, but Viktor has seen Yuuri’s type of dedication before, when he was younger, a dedication that brought him to be a five-time world champion. Yuuri will get their one day, Viktor would bet his life on it. And he’ll stick by Yuuri’s side through every step, supporting him until no longer needed as a coach, then hopefully staying after still to be by his side as something other than a skating mentor. But for now, he needs to let Yuuri know how much he believes in him. And if he doesn’t make the podium… then they’ll try again.

Viktor reaches a hand for Yuuri’s shoulder and gently turns him toward the parking lot exit.

“Let’s go, Yuuri. You’ll be up soon.”

Yuuri stiffens slightly at the touch but allows himself to guided out the lot and up the stairs, the sound of their footsteps tapping on the walls like a march. They don’t speak, the silence stifles anything they’d like to say, so they continue on, wordless.

Viktor knows he screwed up. And now he has to stew in his regret of the situation he caused but still carry the hope that he didn’t set Yuuri back any further than he already was to begin with. If Yuuri cracks under the pressure then Viktor will be the only one to blame; toying with Yuuri’s emotions was a selfish thing to do and it only proves how being a coach is difficult and not something Viktor is equipped to handle on his own. Yuuri deserves so much more than Viktor’s struggling at play pretend coach, and Viktor is at a loss for any idea on how to help him through his struggles. But then again… he’s is still here with Yuuri, walking with him to the stage for a performance with no clear end and refusing to leave his side until the show begins. Isn’t that all Yuuri asked for? For Viktor to have faith in him that he’ll succeed? If Viktor didn’t believe in Yuuri he would have left a long time ago, but that’s not the case at all. As long as Yuuri is still standing then Viktor will stand right beside him, if that’s what Yuuri askes for then that’s what he’ll give.

As they come up to the main floor the commotion of skaters and reporters thickens and makes getting to rink-side difficult but not impossible. The crowd parts once they reach the last stretch before the rink and the overhead announcer wraps up commentary on the previous performance, leading way soon into Yuuri’s introduction. Viktor takes Yuuri’s track jacket and skate guards after he takes them off and enters the rink. Usually at this time, Viktor would try to say something encouraging or inspirational for Yuuri to hold into during his performance, but nothing comes to mind that would be good enough, so Viktor stands uncomfortably in their shared quiet, settling for watching Yuuri sway foot to foot on his skates. Viktor grabs the Makkachin tissue box to use as an ice breaker of sorts and offers it out in front of him where Yuuri grabs a couple of tissues.

Viktor just wants to head back to their hotel and sleep off all the negativity that today had brought. Start over again tomorrow and make things better than how they turned out today, become the coach that he should be and one that can motivate their student. Yuuri looks red-eyed and blotchy but hopefully the cameras won’t catch it when he performs, or they’ll just think he’s exhausted from performing. Viktor sets down the Makkachin plush and holds his hand out for Yuuri’s tissues once he’s done with them. Yuuri moves his hand to the side quickly and drops the ball toward the ice before Viktor reaches over and snatches it out of the air. He feels a small pressure on the top of his head while facing the ice and then a soft pat of Yuuri’s palm against his hair before the feeling and Yuuri’s skates disappear. When Viktor looks up, Yuuri is already half way across the rink and skating toward the center starting point.

The announcer calls Yuuri’s name over the loud speaker as Viktor stares on in bewilderment. He reaches a gloved hand up to trace where Yuuri’s hand was along his head as the skater readies his beginning position in the rink’s middle. Viktor breathes out in relief. Now that he knows Yuuri isn’t cross with him he can watch the performance with a lighter air.

The soft trills of piano flit though the crowds and Yuuri beings, albeit much more fluid than what Viktor had expected after everything that’s happened. He leans over the rink barrier and watches Yuuri carefully as the routine begins. If anything, Yuuri looks more relaxed than he’s been all day from what Viktor can see. The skater raised his head to the ceiling and brings his hands down around his frame as the intro picks up. Viktor squints his eyes through the bright lights of the skating arena.

_Why is he smiling?_

Piano follows Yuuri along his turns and twists and leads him to the take off for his first jump combination. Viktor’s breath catches when he’s in the air but relaxes once Yuuri’s skates hit the ice in a perfect landing for each jump. The crowd roars their approval and Viktor shares in their excitement, fueled by the promise of a performance Yuuri has perfected. Viktor feels the gravity of every jump and slide Yuuri creates and enjoys the rush of blood coursing through his veins as though he were out there right now performing the program. The music speeds up and Yuuri matches the tempo with his signature step sequences to couple with each note of melody. The audience cheers on with encouragement and their voice mingles with the music from the overhead speakers. Violin and piano drift together as Yuuri tackles each measure with a new move to create his story.

The music quiets suddenly to soft single piano notes and the crown mutes, making the air seem as still as glass. First a lunge, then Yuuri transitions into a spread eagle that glides into an Ina Bauer, all executed perfectly in time with the music. Yuuri jumps a triple axel next that triggers the music to quicken its pace once again. He touches down, but continues on as it the move never happened. The next jump combination was over-rotated in each move, but Yuuri managed to shake it off and continue without lag.

_Come on Yuuri, keep focus…_

A triple Lutz, triple toe-loop combo is next and Viktor’s chest tightens when Yuuri makes his entrance.  Both land gracefully although Yuuri is now in the second half of the program; he doesn’t even look like he’s breaking a sweat. Cheers from every angle of the crowd rocket around the rink and make the room deaf with eagerness. Viktor faintly hears the announcer call out the beginning to Yuuri’s step sequence and Viktor doesn’t dare blink for the fear of missing a single moment. Yuuri moves like wind on the ocean with no limits or missteps as he carves his path along the ice through rotations and twists to sew a lace wave crashing over his trail. Each flick of his skate or glide of his hand is a blink and it’s gone as the audience latches onto every detail like moths to a flame.

Viktor can hear his heartbeat echo in his ears and press along the tips of his fingers in an uncontrollable burning to keep watching and never look away, not a single second escaping his sight. The program begins to close and Viktor readies himself for the final toe-loop to close off Yuuri’s program for the last spin ending. Yuuri crosses backward to meet the jump on his outside edge before suddenly switching over to his inside edge and vaulting himself into the air for his rotations before hitting the ice and touching down briefly. Viktor’s jaw nearly hits the floor as the cheers of fans scream all around the arena. It was as if their breath had been taken away then given back in full force to heighten their applause to its maximum.

Viktor can’t function. The air caught in his lungs and his ears tuned out the yelling of the crowd that shook the floor. Yuuri had accomplished something he never did, his own signature move in the final moments of a program, a feat Viktor never dared to attempt. This is the beginning, he can feel it in the soles of his feet, it’s the beginning of the usurp of his throne where Yuuri overthrows him as champion. This is step one and Yuuri doesn’t even know what effect it’ll have in the future.

Yuuri spins low to the ice then rises up for the las sparing notes of the program that’ll grant him a spot to the Rostelecom Cup to compete and the room explodes. Viktor didn’t think it was possible to get this loud from such a small group of people but he was very wrong. The room is ablaze with noise all directed at Yuuri in the center of it all as he stands his final position and sooths some air into his lungs. Viktor raises his hands to his eyes to rub away some of the tears building at the corners.

After everything they’ve done today, Yuuri still manages to surprise him in the most unexpected way possible and shake him to his core. Yuuri can one-up him at a quad-flip but there’s no way he can usurp Viktor in the surprise department, something he takes much pride in. Viktor needs to see Yuuri now, and he needs to let him know how proud he’s made his coach and everyone else who’s cheering him on. Viktor lowers his hands and begins sprinting to the other side of the rink to the kiss and cry and can see Yuuri glancing to where he once was in search of him. Once he reaches the entrance to the ice to catch his breath, Yuuri is already halfway to where he is and looks as if he just ran a marathon, hair tossed and sweat dripping off his forehead. Viktor doesn’t know how many times he can fall in love with a single glance but this moment just adds to the tally marks building on the walls of his chest.

This is the man Viktor dropped everything for to coach and now Yuuri’s proven to everyone exactly _why_. He’s evolved into something beyond everyone’s expectations and Viktor can never express his thankfulness enough to show how blessed he is to be a part of Yuuri’s growth as a person. He’ll spend every remaining day of his life showing that gratefulness if given the chance, a chance he’s in love enough to take.

“Viktor!”

Yuuri’s voice cuts though the crowd like wind through smoke and immediately warms Viktor’s insides like a shot of alcohol though his system; it’s absolutely addictive.

He can hear Yuuri’s skates cutting through the ice as they come closer. “I did great, right?”

Viktor raises his head from looking at the ground and flips his hair away from his eyes. Yuuri seems more beautiful in this moment than Viktor has ever thought possible, sweating and panting all the same. There’s a crack Viktor can feel somewhere deep inside him, a break in his reason, or maybe it’s just an absence of his ability to care. Yuuri may have someone else in the future, but right now, Viktor is the one here for him and will remain by his side, universe be damned. He’ll be the judge of his own fate.

Viktor steps a foot onto the ice and reaches for Yuuri with open arms as the younger skater meets him and immediately falls backward by the force of Viktor’s jump. There’s a moment in time where the world seems to still and it’s only the two of them, suspended in their own thoughts as the universe spins around them both. Viktor reaches one hand behind Yuuri’s head as the other comes to cradle his shoulders for the expected blunt force of impact. Viktor presses his lips against Yuuri’s for only a second, but it felt like an eternity for Viktor’s heart, an eternity he could live over and over again without ever tiring of. It ends all to soon when they hit the ice and Viktor buries his face into the crook of Yuuri’s neck, afraid that if he opens his eyes to the world that it’ll all turn out to be a dream in his own masochistic mindscape.

But the pressure of Yuuri’s hand on his back brings him back to reality, the warmth he can almost feel through the layers of his clothes but nonetheless knows it’s there. Viktor raises himself up to look down on the man beneath him and smiles softly at the surprised look on his face, a look that let’s Viktor know he still keeps the world on their toes.

“This was the only thing I could think of to surprise you more than you’ve surprised me.”

Yuuri stares up wide-eyed before his features soften and Viktor sees all the adoration he’s given reflected back at him through Yuuri’s smile.

“Really?”

Viktor can feel his eyes begin to water and leans down to hide his face in Yuuri’s neck again, anything to hold him for just a moment longer. The world will soon move on into its infinite cycle of finite moments like this, where Viktor holds himself together with everything he can so as to not break apart from the strain of his own thoughts and emotions that threaten to concave at any given moment. For now, he’s here, the back of his glove soaking in the ice more and more as the seconds tick by before he’ll have to leave the heat of Yuuri’s skin to brace the never-ending momentum of reality that’ll claw him back to the kiss and cry, away from his blissful solitude constituting of only him and Yuuri. Only now, in the quiet, in the waves of cheers and applause that land on deaf ears, can Viktor listen to Yuuri’s breathing, transparent and even despite the rocket of his heartbeat. Like feeling the bass of a waltz, Viktor can grasp at the younger skater’s heart through the wall of his chest and reciprocate it in his own. A melody in his veins that Viktor has heard a hundred times, _one two three one two three_ …

 _One two three_ …

Viktor’s breath catches in his lungs as he’s suddenly brought back to his St. Petersburg apartment, to the black and cream tiled floors pattered along his kitchen only to cut off at the glass doors leading to the living room. It’s dark, obviously night outside the open curtains opposite himself from where he sits at their old, three-seater dining room table, the paint already scraping off the edges off the wood. The top of the table barely comes up to his chest where he sits and Viktor can faintly feel a draft swim against the skin of his ankles above his socks. It’s cold.

In front of him, on the table, lies a small brown mug, a bowl with a lid, and a tiny cream pitcher, all but the mug having matching blue and gold designs painted on the surfaces. Viktor’s hand reaches for the lid of the jar and lifts the edge barely to peek inside, seeing the rounded edges of stark white sugar cubes underneath. A child’s hand moves forward, no bigger than the bowl itself, and reaches slowly for one of the cubes; Viktor can feel the sweetness on his tongue.

“Vitenka.”

The lid hits with a tiny _clink_ when it drops from the child’s petit fingers that race away quickly from the sugar jar. Viktor places his hands in his lap to feign innocence as he looks back over his shoulder at his mother standing near the stove, a steaming kettle in hand.

She raises a dark brown eyebrow at him in amusement as she switches off the stove’s fire burner and walks over to the table. “Sugar is for tea, not for snacking,” Natalya gently reminds her child as she tilts some of the brewed tea into the small brown mug, then pouring her own at the opposite end of the table. Viktor scrunches his eyebrows and blows on the steam of his drink.

“I don’t get it,” he explains to his mother. “You weren’t even looking when I checked, how can you see me trying to get a cube every time?” Viktor sets his chin on the table in defeat, resigning that thievery simply wasn’t meant for him, or possibly that his mama is a witch and can always see when he was sneaking sugar cubes. Natalya sits down in her chair and places the kettle on a metal setter to cool.

“Vitya, you may be able to trick your papa, but I’ll always know when your little hands get into mischief; it’s my job to know.”

Viktor lifts his head from the table and grabs four sugar cubes from the jar before placing the lid back on and plopping them one by one into his tea. He’s only allowed four at night because his bedtime is soon after dinner. “Papa should make tea more often then,” he says through the steam rising from his drink. Natalya laughs at that and sips at her own mug, “You’re right, Vitya.”

Viktor stirs in some cream next and watches as the white liquid clouds up from the bottom of his cup and swirls with the dark shade of his tea, looking like white smoke. He reaches both of his hands forward and grab the sides of the mug, pulling it close to his chest to gain some of its warmth.

“When will he be home?”

“Two days.”

His papa was away again for work, but luckily didn’t stay that long this time around, only a few days. He’d be judging skating competitions that Viktor would watch with his mama on their small living room television as she’d call off the names of each move as they’re performed, mimicking the announcer while adding in jokes about how silly some of the skaters looked in their costumes, Viktor would often laugh until tears came to his eyes. Other times, he would try to replicate the performances in their living room by twirling and jumping while pretending to be on the ice, hoping that one day he’ll be able to move like the skaters on T.V. with their beauty and music. His mama would watch him more than the television.

Tonight, there’s no performance to watch, which only makes Viktor want his papa to come home even more from the lack of excitement in their quiet apartment.  There are no other children in the building, so Viktor keeps himself busy for the most part, but missing his father has made things he’s normally enjoyed seen duller, which shows itself. Meals and skate practice are abnormally quiet and Natalya can feel her baby hurting from absence, even now their tea times have been strained by Viktor’s damp mood when his papa is mentioned.

“Vitya.”

Viktor looks up from sipping at his tea and wipes the corners of his mouth, “Hmm?”

“Would you like to dance tonight?”

The child’s eyes immediately light up and a toothy smile stretches across his face as he stands up from his chair in excitement and sets his mugs down on the table. “Yes!”

Natalya grins at the enthusiasm and takes one last sip of her drink before getting up from the table and following her son into the living room through the glass doors, Viktor already standing on the center carpet in third position, always eager to learn. Natalya brings his small arms down back to his sides despite his confusion and pats his hip to tell him that he can stand regularly. “We won’t be doing any ballet tonight, Vitenka,” she stands in front of him, moving his hair behind his ears only for it to fall back in his face a moment later, she expected as much.

Viktor waits for instruction as his mother lifts up his right hand into her left and sets his other hand on her waist, then moving her own to her child’s shoulder, the perfect position for a waltz. Viktor stands at attention, ready for his lesson of positions and steps, but his mother strokes her thumb across his cheek, bringing up the corner of his mouth.

“You look too serious, _рыбка_ , smile a bit. We won’t be doing any ballet lessons, just dancing.”

Natalya begins to rock her hips back and forth, getting her baby to do the same before her feet move to match the sway, Viktor following. He catches on very quickly, not surprising her in the slightest, as they step back and forth in the tiny apartment living room with a single lamp in the corner acting as their stage light. Viktor has done simple dances like this before, but not for a long time, having their time usually be dedicated to ballet. But sometimes, simple things are perfect for complicated emotions. The room is illuminated in a warm fog of light, bouncing along the dust-covered picture frames and frayed edges of the antique carpet. Viktor’s feet pad along the ground, looking very small alongside his mother’s as they twist along the floor in their simple patterns, seemingly floating in the way she carries herself. He wishes to dance like her someday, to move his body like a cloud on water that ripples in his wake. But _someday_ is too far away, no matter how he wills it to be closer.

His mother’s singing starts off at an almost inaudible hum, then transforms into something soft and familiar; she sings mostly lullabies to him, something with rhythm. Tonight, she sings _la vie en rose_ _,_ a languid beat that Viktor knows well and fits perfectly with their waltz. Her voice is laced with honey as she sings, falling effortlessly into her native language as Viktor tries to follow along with his basic understanding of French.

 _“_ _Des yeux qui font baisser les miens,_  
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche.  
Voilà le portrait sans retouche,  
De l'homme auquel j'appartiens.”

 Viktor listens quietly, not wanting to miss a single word of his mother’s song, because this is the song she sings for his papa.

 _“Quand il me prend dans ses bras,_  
Il me parle tout bas,  
Je vois la vie en rose.

 _Il me dit des mots d'amour,_  
Des mots de tous les jours,  
Et ça me fait quelque chose.”

When she dances with Stephan like she does with Viktor now, this is what she tells him, a song filled with love and longing. _I am the dawn_ , she once said when Viktor asked why she sang when his papa came home, _and your papa is my sun, I call out for him until he comes home and returns my world to pink, my life in the prettiest shade of rose_. He never really understood what she meant exactly, but he understood her love for his papa, and how much she misses him when he leaves, and how bright she is when he comes back.

There’s a soft rhythm Viktor follows in his mama’s song, a steady beat that echoes the steps of his dancing feet on the carpet. It’s soft and steady, a feather-light heartbeat in a song about devotion and adoration that Viktor can feel in his own pulse. He’ll find his own sun one day, to make his life pink like his mama’s. His perfect sun, so he’ll never feel lonely again. Viktor smiles at the thought as his mama’s voice dances along with them in the tiny apartment, one two three, one two three, one two three…

One two three…

_Ba-bum ba-bum_

The world returns back to Viktor all at once in a sweeping instant, the memories of his past fleeting like dust in the wind, leaving behind every confusing emotion they sprung from deep within himself. The air feels so much colder than he knows it was just a moment ago, the ice under his hands sharper than he remembers. But there’s a furnace in his core that diminishes the cold and sparks itself throughout his body; this is a feeling all too familiar to him. A burning in his lungs, smoke in his throat from years and years ago, when a fire was lit deep inside of him that does nothing but smolder, but hungers for an inferno.

“Viktor?”

_Ba-bum ba-bum_

And there’s his flame.

He can feel the beat in his own chest through their layers of clothing. It doesn’t sound like bells, or rain drops, or anything else that Viktor’s heard a heartbeat been called before, it reminds him of singing but it’s so very different from that. It sounds human. A beautiful rhythm that moves a person along at a steady pace and reminds Viktor that what he’s holding is _alive_ , wonderfully alive and safe within his arms. This sound is for him, he’s heard it so often before, and now he sees that it’s been an arm’s length away for longer than it should have been. He’s felt this heartbeat pump through his veins before, in a faraway country with a strange language and lunch on the floor. After so much skepticism and sleepless nights, Yuuri was his soulmate the whole time, right there in front of him.

Viktor’s eyes open slowly as he raises himself up on his arms to stare at the man under him, beautifully disheveled with his hair slick with sweat and cheeks pink from exertion. _How incredibly lucky I must be_ , Viktor thinks to himself, _to have someone as wondrous as you as my soulmate_. Viktor begins to feel a lump crawl up his throat despite the ridiculous grin spread across his face. He’s had suspicions for months, so many hints and details that made it seem so plausible that Yuuri was his but he could never be sure, that was what hurt the most, not knowing. Yuuri could have had someone else and Viktor would have never had the chance to show Yuuri how much love and attention he deserves, that Viktor can give to him. And now he can do just that.

Viktor opens his mouth to speak, to tell Yuuri exactly what he just realized and to apologize for not knowing sooner, but something pulls him back. Yuuri looks back up at him with a bewildered expression and Viktor knows that saying something wouldn’t be right, wouldn’t be good for either of them. Yuuri should fall on love with Viktor on his own, not because of any soulmate status and the ties that come with it. What if he tells Yuuri and he stays with Viktor simply because of the social implications to the title?  Yuuri said that he didn’t care about soulmates too much, but if it came down to it, would he really go through with not staying with Viktor if he didn’t love him? A relationship should be by choice and without pressure from either side, telling Yuuri they’re soulmates would take that away.

The smile on Viktor’s face lessens but doesn’t disappear. If Yuuri’s choice costs Viktor his happiness, then he’ll gladly give it away, anything to keep his sun smiling. Soulmates be damned.

Yuuri stares back with an eyebrow raised in confusion at his coach’s odd behavior, obviously not having any idea what just happened. Viktor finds it absolutely endearing, yet it builds tears behind his eyes that he hopes Yuuri doesn’t notice. _This is all for him_. The Russian man wants to desperately to lean in and whisper, to shout to the world what he knows now and that he’ll spend his life living up to the expectations. Not yet though, not now.

Viktor can almost see himself in the reflection of Yuuri’s eyes, his own image staring back at him in deep browns and fiery auburns. He leans away to pick himself off the ice and holds a hand out for Yuuri to take hold of. Confusion is still showing in his features but disappears quickly when Viktor takes his hand in his and leads him off the ice towards the kiss and cry. _This won’t be so hard_ , Viktor tries to reason with himself as Yuuri puts his skating guards on and heads to the bench for the scores. _I just need to keep my mouth shut long enough for Yuuri to see how amazing we would be together._

Yuuri grabs his hand back again when they sit down and Viktor tries not to let the tears behind his eyes fall. Yuuri presses close against him and leans in close, breath ghosting over Viktor’s ear, “Once we get back home to Japan, you owe me a dip in the hot springs together.” Viktor turns to face the other man, surprise apparent on his face. Yuuri only smiles back at him then goes back to waiting for the announcer to tell his score.

“Of course”, he whispers back in the small space between them. “ _Mое солнышко_.”

_All I need to do now is to get Yuuri to fall in love with me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i thrive on comments so please leave one if you enjoyed the chapter or have anything to say on how i can improve it, i dont have a beta editor so im kinda in the dark on how to fix everything if you wanna put some input in i'd appreciate it. also, i have an outline for the rest of the story but if yall wanna see something included dont be afraid to ask, i might put some suggestions in. thanks again for reading, until next chapter!
> 
> мое солнышко - my sunshine  
> рыба - little fish (a term of endearment)


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